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She Science op Society. 



. . BY • ■ 

Stephen Pearl Andrews. 



BOSTON, MASS.: 

SARAH E. HOLMES, Publisher. 

1895. 



O O i o - 



THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY. 

3 I i 

No. 1. 



The True Constitution of Government 



SOVEKEIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL 



■■ 






FINAL DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANTISM, 
DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM. 



BY 

STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 



BOSTON, MASS. : 
SARAH E. HOLMES, Publisher. 

1888. 






~*-y 



EXPLANATORY. 



This book was first printed nearly forty years ago. Its seed, for the most part, fell upon 
stony ground. In consequence of this cold reception, this lack of demand, the work passed 
through hut a few small editions and then disappeared from the market. The author's keen, 
broad, and untiring mind leading him into new fields of thought, he never reprinted it. 
Thus, for more than a quarter of a century, it has been practically out of sight, out of mind. 

Nevertheless its work has never stopped. Here and there the seed did fall upon oases, 
and in fertile spots it always took deep root and reproduced its kind. Its children and 
grand-children and great-grand-children have seldom been conscious of their ancestry, but 
today the family is so numerous that the branches of its genealogical tree pervade with a 
growing, and often a controlling, influence every department of what Mr. Andrews happily 
calls "Man's social habitat." It can be only helpful to this family to be made acquainted 
with its origin, especially when the power of the printing-press enables it to revive and 
freshly scatter the parent-seed upon a more receptive soil. 

Such is the purpose of this new edition of "The Science of Society." The social problem 
is pressing more closely upon our heels than it was in 1851, and a book expounding as lucidly 
as this the basic principles in which alone its solution is to be found is greatly needed. The 
author himself, in the closing years of his life, earnestly desired its republication, and the 
publisher takes pleasure in the thought that the enterprise would meet his approbation. 
And not only his, but that of Josiah Warren as well, who was never tired of praising Mr. 
Andrews's work as in his opinion the soundest exposition that ever had been made or ever 
could be made of the two principles which he (Mr. Warren) had introduced to the world in 
his less pretentious work, " True Civilization." 

But even if this double incentive of satisfying a public demand and honoring a master's 
memory were altogether lacking, the publisher might still find abundant justification and 
encouragement in Robert Browning's lines : 

To shoot a beam into the dark, assists : 
To make that beam do fuller service, spread 
And utilize such bounty to the height, 
That assists also, — and that work is mine. 

March, 1888. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - BINDING RECORD // ^ O 
Call No. HE1T1.T.A6 1895 natu 2/l^/8l ^ 

Author Andrews 



Title Science of society 



fife 

si LA 



_ 



Vol. Copy No. of vols 

Date Block & Item D59-81 3£3 



h 

Specs . Recase if possible; otherwise rebind . ^__ 

Careen with gold lettering. \ I . J/f~) . 

7-56 (rev V72) / ' [j 



INTRODUCTION. 



This little treatise on the True Constitution of Government was delivered as one of the 
regular course of lectures before the New York Mechanics' Institute for the present winter. 
It is now published as the introductory number of a contemplated series of publications, pre- 
senting certain new principles of society, which it is the belief of the author are eminently 
adapted to supply the felt want of the present day for an adequate solution of the existing 
social disturbances. For the principles in question, either as original discoveries, or else as 
presented in a new light, as solvents of the knotty questions which are now puzzling the 
most capacious minds and afflicting the most benevolent hearts of Christendom, the author 
confesses his very great indebtedness, and he believes the world will yet gladly confess its 
indebtedness, to the genius of Josiah Warren, of Indiana, who has been engaged for more 
than twenty years in testing, almost in solitude, the practical operation, in the education of 
children, in the sphere of commerce, and otherwise, of the principles which we are now for 
the first time presenting prominently to the public. 

It has been the belief of the author that there are in the ranks of those who are denomi- 
nated Conservatives many who sympathize deeply with the objects of radical reform, but 
who have never identified themselves with the movements in that direction, either because 
they have not seen that the practical measures proposed by' the advocates of reform con- 
tained the elements of success, or else because they have distinctly perceived or intuitively 
felt that they did not. They may have been repelled, too, by the want of completeness in 
the programme, the want of scientific exactness in the principles announced, or, finally, by 
the want of a lucid conception of the real nature of the remedy which is needed for the mani- 
fold social evils of which all confess the existence in the actual condition of society. If there 
are minds in this position, minds more rigid than others in their demands for precise and 
philosophical principles preliminary to action, it is from such that the author anticipates the 
most cordial reception of the elements propounded by Mr. Warren, so soon as they are seen 
in their connections and interrelations with each other. 

Believing that these principles will justify the assumption, I have ventured to place at the 
head of this series of publications, as a general title, " The Science of Society." 

The propriety of the use of the term " Science " in such a connection may be questioned by 
some whom habit has accustomed to apply that term to a much lower range of investiga- 
tions. If researches into the habits of beetles and tadpoles, and their localities and conditions 



6 Introduction. 

of existence, are entitled to the dignified appellation of Science, certainly similar researches 
into the nature, the wants, the adaptations, and, so to speak, into the true or requisite moral 
and social habitat of the spiritual animal called Man must be, if conducted according to the 
rigid methods of scientific induction from observed facts, equally entitled to that distinction. 
The series of works, of which this is the first in order, will deal in no vague aspirations 
after "the good time coming." They will propound definite principles which demand to be 
regarded as having all the validity of scientific truths, and which, taken in their co-relations 
with each other, are adequate to the solution of the social problem. If this pretension be 
made good, the importance of the subject will not be denied. If not well founded, the defi- 
niteness of the propositions will be favorable to a speedy and successful refutation. 

S. P. A. 

New Yoke, January, 1851. 



The True Constitution of Government. 



THE TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

A LECTURE. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

The subject which I propose to consider this evening is the true constitution of 
human government. 

Every age is a remarkable one, no doubt, for those who live in it. When immo- 
bility reigns most in human affairs, there is still enough of movement to fix the 
attention, and even to excite the wonder of those who are immediately in proxim- 
ity with it. This natural bias in favor of the period with which we have most to 
do is by no means sufficient, however, to account for the growing conviction, on 
all minds, that the present epoch is a marked transition from an old to a new 
order of things. The scattered rays of the gray dawn of the new era date back, 
indeed, beyond the lifetime of the present generation. The first streak of light 
that streamed through the dense darkness of the old regime was the declaration by 
Martin Luther of the right of private judgment in matters of conscience. The 
next, which shed terror upon the old world, as a new portent of impending revolu- 
tions, was the denial by Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell, and others of the divine 
right of kings, and the assertion of inherent political rights in the people them- 
selves. This was followed by the American Declaration of Independence, the es- 
tablishment of a powerful Democratic Republic in the western world upon the 
basis of that principle, followed by the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, 
the Reaction, and the apparent death in Europe of the Democratic idea. Finally, 
in our day, comes the red glare of French Socialism, at which the world is still 
gazing with uncertainty whether it be some lurid and meteoric omen of fearful 
events, or whether it be not the actual rising of the Sun of Righteousness, with 
healing in His wings; for there are those who profoundly and religiously believe 
that the solution of the social problem will be the virtual descent of the New Jeru- 
salem, — the installation of the kingdom of heaven upon earth. 

First in the religious, then in the political, and finally in the social relations of 
men new doctrines have thus been broached, which are full of promise to the hope- 



8 The Science of Society. 

ful, and full of alarm and dismay to the timid and conservative. This distinction 
marks the broadest division in the ranks of mankind. In Church and State and 
social life the real parties are the Progressionists and the Retrogressionists, — those 
whose most brilliant imaginings are linked with the future, and those whose sweet- 
est remembrances bind them in tender associations to the past. Catholic and Pro- 
testant, Whig and Democrat, Anti-Socialist and Socialist, are terms which, in their 
origin, correspond to this generic division ; but no sooner does a new classification 
take place than the parties thus formed are again subdivided, on either hand, by 
the ever-permeating tendency, on the one side toward freedom, emancipation, and 
progress, and toward law and order and immobility on the other. 

Hitherto the struggle between conservatism and progress has seemed doubtful. 
Victory has kissed the banner, alternately, of either host. At length the serried 
ranks of conservatism falter. Reform, so called, is becoming confessedly more po- 
tent than its antagonist. The admission is reluctantly forced from pallid lips that 
revolutions — political, social, and religious — constitute the programme of the com- 
ing age. Reform, so called, for weal or woe, but yet Reform, must rule the hour. 
The older constitutions of society have outlived their day. No truth commends 
itself more universally to the minds of men now than that thus set forth by Car- 
lyle : " There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all. That human 
things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with 
any steadiness or continuance there, — this small hope is not now a tenable one. 
These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is 
not to be total and final 1 It is a time to make the dullest man consider, and ask 
himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound? A veritable 'New Era/ to the 
foolish as well as to the wise." Nor is this state of things confined to Europe. 
The agitations in America may be more peaceful, but they are not less profound. 
The foundations of old beliefs and habits of thought are breaking up. The old 
guarantees of order are fast falling away. A veritable "new era" with us, too, is 
alike impending and inevitable. 

What remains to be done, then, for wise men, is clearly this : to attempt to pen- 
etrate the future by investigating the past and the present, to ascertain whether 
there be not elements of calculation capable of fixing with tolerable certainty the 
precise point in the sidereal heavens of human destiny toward which our whole 
system is confessedly verging with accelerated velocity. To penetrate the gloom 
which encircles the orbit of our future progression might, at least, end the torture 
of suspense, even to those who may be least content with the nature of the solution. 
"If," says Carlyle again, "the accursed nightmare that is crushing out the life of 
us and ours would take a shape, approach us like the Hyrcanian tiger, the Behemoth 
of Caos, or the Archfiend himself, — in any shape that we could see and fasten on, — 
a man can have himself shot with cheerfulness, but it needs that he shall clearly see 
for what." 



The True Constitution of Government. 9 

It is, then, neither unbecoming nor inappropriate, at this time, to attempt to prog- 
nosticate, by philosophical deductions from operative principles the chracteristics 
of the new society which is to be constructed out of the fragments of the old. It 
is, perhaps, only right that I should begin by declaring the general nature of the re- 
sults to which my own mind is conducted by the speculations I have made upon the 
subject, and toward which I shall, so far as I may, endeavor, this evening, to sway 
your convictions. 

I avow that, for one, I take the hopeful, the expectant, even the exulting view of 
the prospects of humanity, under the influence of causes which, to the minds of 
many, are pregnant with evil. I hail the progress of that unsparing criticism of old 
institutions which is the characteristic of the present age. I hail with still higher 
enthusiasm a dim outline which begins to be perceived by the keenest vision, through 
the twilight mists which yet hang upon the surrounding hilltops of a social fabric, 
whose foundations are equity, whose ceiling is security, whose pillars are coopera- 
tion and fraternity, and whose capitals and cornices are carved into the gnaceful 
forms of mutual urbanity and politeness. It is just to you that I should announce 
this faith, that you may receive the vaticinations of the prophet with due allowance 
for the inebriation of the prophetic rhapsody. I proclaim myself in some sense a 
visionary ; but in all ages there have been visionaries whose visions of today have 
proved the substantial realities of tomorrow. 

I shall make no apology for the rashness of the attempt to trace, with a distinct 
outline, some of the gigantic changes which will occur in the social organization of 
the world as the necessary outgrowth of principles now at work, and which are be- 
coming every day more potential, in proportion as forces, which have hitherto been 
deemed antagonistic, converge and cooperate. 

I affirm, then, firstly, that there is at this day a marked convergence and a pro- 
spective cooperation of principles which have hitherto resisted each other, or, more 
properly, a development of one common principle in spheres of life so diverse from 
each other that they have hitherto been regarded as unrelated, if not positively an- 
tagonistic. I assert, and shall endeavor to make good the assertion, that the essen- 
tial spirit, the vital and fundamental principle of the three great modern movements 
to which I have already alluded, — namely, the Protestant Reformation, the Dem- 
ocratic Revolution, still progressing, and, finally, the Socialist Agitation, which is 
spreading in multiform varieties of reproduction over the whole civilized world, — 
is one and the same, and that this common affinity is beginning in various ways to 
be recognized or felt. If this assertion be true, it is one of immense significance. 
If Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are merely different expressions of the 
same idea, then, undoubtedly, the confluent force of these three movements will 
expand tremendously the sweep of their results, in the direction toward which they 
collectively tend. 

What, then, if this be so, is this common element? In what great feature are 



10 The Science of Society. 

Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism identical? I will answer this interroga- 
tory first, and demonstrate the answer afterward. Protestantism, Democracy, and 
Socialism are identical in the assertion of the Supremacy of the Individual, — a 
dogma essentially contumacious, revolutionary, and antagonistic to the basis prin- 
ciples of all the older institutions of society, which make the Individual subordinate 
aud subject to the Church, to the State, and to Society respectively. Not only is 
this supremacy or sovereignty of the individual a common element of all three 
of these great modern movements, but I will make the still more sweeping assertion 
that it is substantially the whole of those movements. It is not merely a feature, 
as I have just denominated it, but the living soul itself, the vital energy, the integral 
essence or being of them all. 

Protestants and Protestant churches may differ in relation to every other article 
of their creed, and do so differ, without ceasing to be Protestants, so long as they 
assert the paramount right of private or individual judgment in matters of con- 
science. It is that, and that only, which makes them Protestants, and distinguishes 
them from the Catholic world, which asserts, on the contrary, the supreme author- 
ity of the church, of the priesthood, or of some dignitary or institution other than 
the Individual whose judgment and whose conscience is in question. In like man- 
ner, Democrats and Democratic governments and institutions may differ from each 
other, and may vary infinitely at different periods of time, and still remain Dem- 
ocratic, so long as they maintain the one essential principle and condition of Dem- 
ocracy, — namely, that all governmental powers reside in, are only delegated by, 
and can be, at any moment, resumed by the people, — that is, by the individuals, 
who are first Individuals, and who then, by virtue only of the act of delegating 
such powers, become a people, — that is, a combined mass of Individuals. It is this 
dogma, and this alone, which makes the Democrat, and which distinguishes him 
from the Despotist, or the defender of the divine right of kings. 

Again, Socialism assumes every shade and variety of opinion respecting the 
modes of realizing its own aspirations, and, indeed, upon every other point, except 
one, which, when investigated, will be found to be the paramount rights of the In- 
dividual over social institutions, and the consequent demand that all existing so- 
cial institutions shall be so modified that the Individual shall be in no manner 
subjected to them. This, then, is the identical principle of Protestantism and 
Democracy carried into its application in another sphere. The celebrated formula 
of Fourier that " destinies are proportioned to attractions," means, when translated 
into less technical phraseology, that society must be so reorganized that every In- 
dividual shall be empowered to choose and vary his own destiny or condition and 
pursuits in life, untrammeled by social restrictions ; in other words, so that every 
man may be a law unto himself, paramount to all other human laws, and the sole 
judge for himself of the divine law and of the requisitions of his own individual 
nature and organization. This is equally the fundamental principle of all the so- 



The True Constitution of Government. 11 

cial theories, except in the case of the Shakers, the Rappites, etc., which are based 
upon religious whims, demanding submission, as a matter of duty, to a despotic 
rule, and which embody, in another form, the readoption of the popish or conserva- 
tive principle. They, therefore, while they live in a form of society similar in some 
respects to those which have been proposed by the various schools of Socialists, are, 
in fact, neither Protestants nor Democrats, and, consequently, not Socialists in the 
sense in which I am now defining Socialism. The forms of society proposed by So- 
cialism are the mere shell of the doctrine, — means to the end, — a platform upon 
which to place the Individual, in order that he may be enabled freely to exercise 
his own Individuality, which is the end and aim of all. We have seen that the 
shell is one which may be inhabited by despotism. Possibly it is unfit for the habita- 
tion of any thing else than despotism, which the Socialist hopes, by ensconcing him- 
self therein, to escape. It is possible, even, that Socialism may have mistaken its 
measures altogether, and that the whole system of Association and combined inter- 
ests and combined responsibilities proposed by it may be essentially antagonistic to 
the very ends proposed. All this, however, if it be so, is merely incidental. It be- 
longs to the shell, and not to the substance, — to the means, and not to the end. 
The whole programme of Socialism may yet be abandoned or reversed, and yet So- 
cialism remain in substance the same thing. What Socialism demands is the eman- 
cipation of the Individual from social bondage, by whatsoever means will effect 
that design, in the same manner as Protestantism demands the emancipation of 
the Individual from ecclesiastical bondage, and Democracy from political. Who- 
soever makes that demand, or labors to that end, is a Socialist. Any particular 
views he may entertain, distinguishing him from other Socialists, regarding prac- 
tical measures, or the ultimate forms of society, are the mere specific differences, 
like those which divide the Protestant sects of Christendom. 

This definition of Socialism may surprise some into the discovery of the fact that 
they have been Socialists all along, unawares. Some, on the other hand, who have 
called themselves Socialists may not at once be inclined to accept the definition. 
They may not perceive clearly that it is the emancipation of the Individual for 
which they are laboring, and affirm that it is, on the other hand, the freedom and 
happiness of the race. They will not however, deny that it is both; and a very 
little reflection will show that the freedom and happiness of each individual will 
be the freedom and happiness of the race, and that the freedom and happiness of 
the race can not exist so long as there is any individual of the race who is not happy 
and free. So the Protestant and the Democrat may not always have a clear intel- 
lectual perception of the distinctive principle of their creeds. He may be attached 
to it from an instinctive sentiment, which he has never thoroughly analyzed, or even 
from the mere accidents of education and birth. 

Protestantism proclaims that the individual has an inalienable right to judge for 
himself in all matters of conscience, Democracy proclaims that the Individual 



12 The Science of Society. 

has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Socialism 
proclaims that the Individual has an inalienable right to that social position which 
his powers and natural organization qualify him, and which his tastes incline him 
to fill, and, consequently, to that constitution or arrangement of the property re- 
lations, and other relations of society, whatsoever that may be, which will enable 
him to enjoy and exercise that right, — the adaptation of social conditions to the 
wants of each Individual, with all his peculiarities and fluctuations of taste, instead 
of the moulding of the Individual into conformity with the rigid requirements of 
a preconcerted social organization. 

If this be a correct statement of the essential nature of Protestantism, Democracy, 
and Socialism, then Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are not actuated by 
three distinct principles at all. They are simply three partial announcements of 
one generic principle, which lies beneath all these movements, and of which they 
are the legitimate outgrowths or developments, modified only by the fact of a dif- 
ferent application of the same principle. This great generic principle, which under- 
lies every manifestation of that universal unrest and revolution which is known 
technically in this age as "Progress," is nothing more nor less than "The Sover- 
eignty of the Individual." It is that which is the central idea and vital prin- 
ciple of Protestantism; it is that which is the central idea and vital principle of 
Democracy; and it is that which is the central idea and vital principle of Socialism. 

This being so, it is high time that the mutual affinity of these movements should 
be intelligently perceived and recognized both by the friends and the enemies of 
the movements themselves. It is high time that the scene of the battle-field should 
be shifted from the right or wrong of any or all of the partial developments of the 
principle to the essential right or wrong of the principle itself. The true issue is 
not whether Protestantism be good or evil, whether Democracy be good or evil, 
nor whether Socialism be good or evil, but whether the naked, bald, unlimited 
principle of the Sovereignty of the Individual, in human government and the ad- 
ministration of human affairs, be essentially good and true or essentially pernicious 
and false. This is the issue now up for trial before the world, and the definitive de- 
cision of which must be had before the final destiny of mankind upon earth can be 
even rough-hewn by the most vivid imagination, and certainly before any thing ap- 
proximating scientific deduction respecting it can be had. 

You will please to consider yourselves, Ladies and Gentlemen, as a jury empan- 
elled to try this issue. I take my position before you as the advocate of the Sover- 
eignty of the Individual, and the defender of the spirit of the present age. If this 
principle be essentially good and true, then it may be trusted wherever it leads, 
and the general drift of what the world calls "Progress" is in the right direction, 
whatever mistakes may be made in matters of detail. If it is a false principle, the 
sooner we understand that fact the better ; but let it be also understood, in that 
case, that we have much to undo which has been already done, and which has been 



The True Constitution of Government. 13 

supposed to be well done, in these modern times. In that case, Protestantism is 
all wrong, and Democracy is all wrong ; the Whateleys, the Wisemans, the Bron- 
sons, the Windischgratzes, and the Haynaus are philosophers and philanthropists 
of the right school ; and the Luthers, the Channings, the Jeffersons, the Washing- 
tons, and the Kossuths are the world's worst foes, — the betrayers and scourgers 
which the wrath of an offended Heaven has let loose upon earth, first to delude 
and then to punish mankind for their sins. 

I will first endeavor to set before you a clearer view of the doctrine of the Sover- 
eignty of the Individual, as based upon the principle of the infinite Individuality 
of things. I will then show that this Sovereignty of the Individual furnishes the 
law of the development of human society, as illustrated in the progi'essive move- 
ments of modern times. Finally, I shall endeavor to trace the development which 
is hereafter to result from the further operation of this principle, and to fix, so 
nearly as may be, the condition of human affairs toward which it conducts, especi- 
ally in that particular department of human affairs which constitutes the subject 
of investigation this evening, — namely, the government of mankind. 

The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual — in one sense itself a prin- 
ciple — grows out of the still more fundamental principle of "Individuality,' 
which pervades universal nature. Individuality is positively the most fundamental 
and universal principle which the finite mind seems capable of discovering, and the 
best image of the Infinite. There are no two objects in the universe which are pre- 
cisely alike. Each has its own constitution and peculiarities, which distinguish it 
from every other. Infinite diversity is the universal law. In the multitude of 
human countenances, for example, there are no two alike, and in the multitude of 
human characters there is the same variety. The hour which your courtesy has 
assigned to me would be entirely consumed, if I were to attempt to adduce a thou- 
sandth part of the illustrations of this subtile principle of Individuality, which lie 
patent upon the face of nature, all around me. It applies equally to persons, to 
things, and to events. There have been no two occurrences which were precisely 
alike during all the cycling periods of time. No action, transaction, or set of cir- 
cumstances whatsoever ever corresponded precisely to any other action, transaction, 
or set of circumstances. Had I a precise knowledge of all the occurrences which 
have ever taken place up to this horn - , it would not suffice to enable me to make a 
law which would be applicable in all respects to the very next occurrence which 
shall take place, nor to any one of the infinite millions of events which shall here- 
after occur. This diversity reigns throughout every kingdom of nature, and mocks 
at all human attempts to make laws, or constitutions, or regulations, or govern- 
mental institutions of any sort, which shall work justly and harmoniously amidst 
the unforeseen contingencies of the future. 

The individualities of objects are least, or, at all events, they are less apparent 
when the objects are inorganic or of a low grade of organization. The individual- 



14 The Science of Society. 

ities of the grains of sand which compose the beach, for example, are less marked 
than those of vegetables, and those of vegetables are less than those of animals, 
and, finally, those of animals are less than those of man. In proportion as an object 
is more complex, it embodies a greater number of elements, and each element has 
its own individualities, or diversities, in every new combination into which it| 
enters. Consequently these diversities are multiplied into each other, in the infi-i 
nite augmentation of geometrical progression. Man, standing, then, at the head' 
of the created universe, is consequently the most complex creature in existence, — 
every individual man or woman being a little world in him or herself, an image' 
or reflection of God, an epitome of the Infinite. Hence the individualities of such 
a being are utterly immeasurable, and every attempt to adjust the capacities, the 
adaptations, the wants, or the responsibilities of one human being by the capaci- 
ties, the adaptations, the wants, or the responsibilities of another human being, 
except in the very broadest generalities, is unqualifiedly futile and hopeless. Hence 
every ecclesiastical, governmental, or social institution which is based on the idea 
of demanding conformity or likeness in any thing, has ever been, and ever will be, 
frustrated by the operation of this subtile, all-pervading principle of Individuality. 
Hence human society has ever been and is still in the turmoil of revolution. The 
only alternative known has been between revolution and despotism. Revolutions 
violently burst the bonds, and explode the foundations of existing institutions. 
The institution falls before the Individual. Despotism only succeeds by denatu- 
ralizing mankind. It extinguishes their individualities only by extinguishing 
them. The Individual falls before the institution. Judge ye which is best, the 
man-made or the God-made thing. 

In the next place this Individuality is inherent and unconquerable, except, as II 
have just said, by extinguishing the man himself. The man himself has no power 
over it. He can not divest himself of his organic peculiarities of character, any 
more than he can divest himself of his features. It attends him even in the effort! 
he makes, if he makes any, to divest himself of it. He may as well attempt to 
flee his own shadow as to rid himself of the indefeasible, God-given inheritance of 
his own Individuality. 

Finally, this indestructible and all-pervading Individuality furnishes, itself, the 
law, and the only true law, of order and harmony. Governments have hitherto 
been established, and have apologized for the unseemly fact of their existence, from 
the necessity of establishing and maintaining order ; but order has never yet been 
maintained, revolutions and violent outbreaks have never yet been ended, public 
peace and harmony have never yet been secured, for the precise reason that the or- 
ganic, essential, and indestructible natures of the objects which it was attempted 
to reduce to order have always been constricted and infringed by every such at-i 
tempt. Just in proportion as the effort is less and less made to reduce men to] 
order, just in that proportion they become more orderly, as witness the difference 



The True Constitution of Government. 15 

in the state of society in Austria and the United States. Plant an army of one 
hundred thousand soldiers in New York, as at Paris, to preserve the peace, and we 
should have a bloody revolution in a week ; and be assured that the only remedy 
for what little of turbulence remains among us, as compared with European soci- 
eties, will be found to be more liberty. When there remain positively no external 
restrictions, there will be positively no disturbance, provided always certain regu- 
lating principles of justice, to which I shall advert presently, are accepted and 
enter into the public mind, serving as substitutes for every species of repressive 
laws. 

T was saying that Individuality is the essential law of order. This is true 
throughout the universe. When every individual particle of matter obeys the law 
of its own attraction, and comes into that precise position, and moves in that pre- 
cise direction, which its own inherent individualities demand, the harmony of the 
spheres is evolved. By that means only natural classification, natural order, natu- 
ral organization, natural harmony and agreement are attained. Every scheme or 
arrangement which is based upon the principle of thwarting the inherent affinities 
}f the individual monads which compose any system or organism is essentially vi- 
llous, and the organization is false, — a mere bundle of revolutionary and antago- 
nistic atoms. It is time that human system builders should begin to discover this 
universal truth. The principle is self-evident. Objects bound together contrary 
io their nature must and will seek to rectify themselves by breaking the bonds 
which confine them, while those which come together by their own affinities remain 
quiescent and content. Let human system makers of all sorts, then, admit the 
principle of an infinite Individuality among men, which can not be suppressed, 
and which must be indulged and fostered, at all events, as one element in the solu- 
ion of the problem they have before them. If they are unable to see clearly how 
ill external restrictions can be removed with safety to the well-being of society, 
et them, nevertheless, not abandon a principle which is self-evident, but let them 
nodestly suspect that there may be some other elements in the solution of the same 
Droblem, which their sagacity has not yet enabled them to discover. In all events, 
a,nd at all hazards, this Individuality of every member of the human family must 
be recognized and indulged, because first, as we have seen, it is infinite, and can 
not be measured or prescribed for; then, because it is inherent, and can not be 
conquered; and, finally, because it is the essential element of order, and can not, 
onsequently, be infringed without engendering infinite confusion, such as has 
litherto universally reigned, in the administration of human affairs. 

If, now, Individuality is a universal law which must be obeyed if we would have 
jrder and harmony in any sphere, and, consequently, if we would have a true con- 
stitution of human government, then the absolute Sovereignty of the Individual 
lecessarily results. The monads or atoms of which human society is composed are 
lie individual men and women in it. They must be so disposed of, as we have seen, 



16 The Science of Society. 

in order that society may be harmonic, that the destiny of each shall be controlled by 
his or her own individualities of taste, conscience, intellect, capacities, and will. 
But man is a being endowed with consciousness. He, and no one else, knows the 
determining force of his own attractions. No one else can therefore decide for 
him, and hence Individuality can only become the law of human action by secur- 
ing to each individual the sovereign determination of his own judgment and of his 
own conduct, in all things, with no right reserved either of punishment or censure 
on the part of any body else whomsoever; and this is what is meant by the Sover- 
eignty of the Individual, limited only by the ever-accompanying condition, result- 
ing from the equal Sovereignty of all others, that the onerous consequences of his 
actions be assumed by himself. 

If my audieuce were composed chiefly of Catholics, or Monarchists, or Anti- 
Progressionists of any sort, I should develop this argument more at length, for, as 
I have said, it is the real issue, and the only real issue, between the reformatory and 
the conservative portions of mankind; but I suppose that I may, with propriety, 
assume that I am before an auditory who are in the main Protestant and Demo- 
cratic, and, assuming that, I shall then be authorized to assume, in accordance 
with the principles I have endeavored to develop, that they are likewise substan- 
tially Socialist, according to the definition I have given to Socialism, whether they 
have hitherto accepted or repudiated the name. It is enough, however, if I address 
you as Protestants and Democrats, or as either of these. I shall therefore assume, 
without further dwelling upon the fundamental statement of those principles, that 
you are ready to admit so much of Individuality and of the Sovereignty of the 
Individual as is necessarily involved in the propositions of Protestantism or Demo- 
cracy. I shall assume that I am before an assembly of men and women who sym- 
pathize with ecclesiastical and political enfranchisement, — who believe that what 
the world calls Progress, in these modern times, is in the main real and not sham 
progress, a genuine and legitimate development of the race. Instead, therefore, 
of pursuing the main argument further, I will return to, and endeavor more fully 
to establish, a position which I have already assumed, — namely, that, by virtue of 
the fact of being either a Protestant or a Democrat, you have admitted away the 
whole case, and that you are fully committed to the whole doctrine of Individu- 
ality and the Sovereignty of the Individual, wherever that may lead. 

I assert, then, the doctrine of Individuality, in its broadest and most unlimited 
sense. I assert that the law of genuine progress in human affairs is identical with 
the tendency to individualize. In ecclesiastical affairs it is the breaking up of the 
Church into sects, the breaking up of the larger sects into minor sects, the break- 
ing up of the minor sects, by continual schism, into still minuter fragments of 
sects, and, finally, a complete disintegration of the whole mass into individuals, at 
which point every human being becomes his own sect and his own church. Does 
it require any demonstration that this is the natural tendency and the legitimate 



The True Constitution of Government. 17 

development of Protestantism, that it is in fact the necessary and inevitable out- 
growth of its own fundamental principle. The History of all Religions in Protest- 
ant Christendom is becoming already too voluminous to be written. With the 
multiplication of sects grows the spirit of toleration, which is nothing else but the 
recognition of the sovereignty of others. A glance at the actual condition of the 
Protestant Church demonstrates the tendency to the obliteration of Sectarianism 
by the very superabundance of sects. 

In the political sphere the individualizing tendency of Democracy is exhibited 
in the distribution of the departments of government into the hands of different 
depositaries of power, the discrimination of the chief functions of government into 
the Legislature, the Executive, and the Judiciary, in the division of the Legisla- 
ture into distinct branches, in the representative system which recognizes the In- 
dividuality of different confederated states, and of different portions of the same 
state, in the divorce of the Church and State, and yet more strikingly than all in 
the successive surrender to the Individual of one branch after another of what was 
formerly regarded as the legitimate business of government. 

Under the old order of things, government interfered to determine the trade or 
occupation of the Individual, to settle his religious faith, to regulate his locomo- 
tion, to prescribe his hours of relaxation and retirement, the length of his beard, 
the cut of his apparel, his relative rank, the mode of his social intercourse, and so 
on continuously, until government was in fact every thing, and the Individual no- 
thing. Democracy, working somewhat blindly, it is true, but yet guided by a true 
instinct, begotten by its own great indwelling vital principle, the Sovereignty of 
the Individual, has already substantially revolutionized all that. It has swept 
away, for the most part, in America at least, the impertinent interference of govern- 
ment with the pursuits, the religious opinions and ceremonies, the travel, the 
amusements, the dress, and the manners of the citizen. One whole third of the 
field heretofore occupied by government has thus been surrendered to the Indivi- 
dual. To this point we have already attained, practically, at the precise stage at 
which we now are in the transition from the past to the future model of the organi- 
zation of society. 

But the principle of Democracy does not stop here. Government still interferes, 
even in these United States, in some instances, with the social and political status 
of the Individual, as in the case of slavery, with commerce, with the title to the 
soil, with the validity of private obligations, with the treatment of crime, and, 
finally, with the marriage and parental relationships of the citizen; and it is obvi- 
ously an incongruous fact that it interferes with all these, in many instances at 
least, to the great annoyance of the citizen, who, according to our political theory, 
is himself the sovereign, and consequently the voluntary fabricator of that which 
annoys him. To the philosophical mind there is that in this incongruity alone 
which predicts the ultimate emancipation of the citizen from the restrictions of le- 



18 The Science of Society. 

gislation and jurisprudence, in every aspect of his existence. Accordingly, there 
is another whole third of the domain hitherto occupied by Government which is at 
this moment in dispute between it and the Individual. The whole of that legisla- 
tion which establishes or tolerates that form of human bondage which is called 
slavery is at this moment undergoing the most determined and vigorous onset of 
public opinion which any false and tyrannical institution of Government was ever 
called upon to endure. The full and final abolition of slavery can not but be re- 
garded, by every reflecting mind, as prospectively certain. Such is the fiat of 
Democracy ; such is the inevitable sequitur from the Democratic premise of inherent 
political rights. Government interferes, again, to regulate commerce; but what is 
the demand of Democracy in relation to that? Nothing short of absolute free 
trade. Democracy says to Government, Hands off ! Let the Individual determine 
for himself when, and where, and how he will buy and sell. Does any one doubt 
that Democracy will, in the long run, have its own way in relation to this matter 
as well, and that tariffs, and custom houses, and collectorships, and the whole lum- 
bering paraphernalia of indirect taxation, which fences out the intercourse of na- 
tions, will be looked back upon, in a generation or two, in a light akin to that in 
which the police system of Fouche, the passport system of the despotic countries of 
Europe, and the censorship of the press are now regarded by us? Government 
still interferes to control the public domain ; but already an organized and rapidly 
augmenting political organization is demanding in this country a surrender of this 
whole subject to the Individual Sovereigns who make the Government, and who 
need the land. Nor are the modest pretensions of Land Reform, which as yet 
touch only the public domain, likely to end at that. The very foundation prin- 
ciples of the ownership of land, as vested in individuals and protected by law, can 
not escape much longer from a searching and radical investigation ; and when that 
comes, the arbitrary legislation of Government will have to give place to such natu- 
ral and scientific principles regulating the subject as may be evolved. Land Re- 
form, in its present aspect, is merely the prologue to a thorough and unsparing, but 
philosophical and equitable agrarianism, by means of which either the land itself, 
or an equal participation in the benefits of the land, shall be secured to the whole 
people. Science, not human legislation, must finally govern the distribution of the 
soil. Government, again, interferes with contracts and private obligations. But 
already the demand is growing loud for the abolition of the usury laws, and a dis- 
tant murmuring is overheard of the question whether good faith and the mainten- 
ance of credit would not be promoted by dispensing with all laws for the collection 
of debts. Both the statesman and the citizen have observed, not without profound 
consideration, the significant fact that the fear of the law is less potential for the 
enforcement of obligations than commercial honor ; that the protest of a notary, or 
even & whisper of suspicion on Change, is fraught with a cogency which neither a 
bench warrant nor a capias ad satisfaciendum ever possessed. Government still 



The True Constitution of Government. 19 

deals with criminals by the old-fashioned process of punishment, but both science 
and philanthropy concur in pronouncing that the grand remedial agency for crime 
is prevention, and not cure. The whole theory of vindictive punishment is rapidly 
obsolescent. That theory once dead, all that remains of punishment is simply de- 
fensive. Imprisonment melts into the euphemism, detention ; and, while detained, 
the prisoner is treated tenderly, as a diseased or unfortunate person. Nor does 
Democracy stop at that. Democracy declares that liberty is an inalienable right, 
the inherent prerogative of the Individual Sovereign, of which there is no possible 
defeasance, even by his own act. Democracy therefore claims, or will claim when 
it better understands the universality of its own pretension, either such conditions 
of society that criminals shall no longer be made, or else that some more delicate 
method of guardianship shall be devised which shall respect the dignity with which 
Democracy invests the Individual man. 

When the battles which are thus already waged in these various departments of 
human affairs between Government and the Individual shall have been finally 
fought and won, the domain of Government will have shrunk to the merest frag- 
ment of its old dimensions. Hardly any sphere of legislation, worthy of the name, 
will remain, save that of the marriage and parental relations. These are subjects 
of great delicacy, and form, ordinarily, an insuperable barrier to the freedom of 
investigation in this direction. It is in connection with these subjects that men 
shrink with dismay from what they understand to be the programme of Socialism. 
A brief consideration of the subject, conducted with the boldness and impartiality 
of science, will demonstrate, however, that the most extreme proposition of Social- 
ism does not transcend, in the least, the legitimate operation of the fundamental 
principle of either Protestantism or Democracy. There is that, both in one and 
the other, which, carried simply out to its logical and inevitable conclusion, covers 
the whole case of marriage and the love relations, and completely emancipates them 
from the impertinent interference of human legislation. First, what says Protest- 
antism? Why, that the right of private judgment in matters of conscience is para- 
mount to all other authority whatsoever. But marriage has been, in all ages, a 
subject eminently under the dominion of conscience and the religious sense. Be- 
sides, it is one of the best recognized principles of high-toned religionism that every, 
action of the life is appropriately made matter of conscience, inasmuch as the re- 
sponsibility of the Individual toward God is held to extend to every, even the mi- 
nutest thing, which the Individual does. No man, we are told, can answer for his 
brother. This, then, settles the whole question. It abandons the whole subject to 
the conscience of the Individual. It implies the charge of a spiritual despotism, 
wholly unwarranted, for any man to interfere with the conscientious determination 
of any other with regard to it. Nor can it be objected, with any effect, that this 
rule only applies when the determination of the Individual accords with, and is 
based upon, his own conscientious conviction, for who shall determine whether it 



20 The Science of Society. 

be so or not? Clearly no one but the Individual himself. Any tribunal assuming 
to do it for him would be the Inquisition over again, which is the special abhorrence 
of Protestantism. Such, then, is the Protestant faith. But what, let us inquire, 
is the Protestant practice? Precisely what it should be, in strict accordance with 
the fundamental axiom of Protestantism. Every variety of conscience and every 
variety of deportment in reference to this precise subject of love is already tolerated 
among us. At one extreme of the scale stand the Shakers, who abjure the connec- 
tion of the sexes altogether. At the other extremity stands the association of Per- 
fectionists, at Oneida, who hold and practise, and justify by the Scriptures, as a 
religious dogma, what they denominate complex marriage, or the freedom of love. 
We have, in this State, stringent laws against adultery and fornication; but laws 
of that sort fall powerless, in America, before the all-pervading sentiment of Pro- 
testantism, which vindicates the freedom of conscience to all persons and in all 
things, provided the consequences fall upon the parties themselves. Hence the 
Oneida Perfectionists live undisturbed and respected, in the heart of the State of 
New York, and in the face of the world ; and the civil government, true to the 
Democratic principle, which is only the same principle in another application, is 
little anxious to interfere with this breach of its own ordinances, so long as they 
cast none of the consequences of their conduct upon those who do not consent to 
bear them. 

Such, then, is the unlimited sweep of the fundamental axiom of Protestantism. 
Such its unhesitating indorsements, both theoretically and practically, of the whole 
doctrine of the absolute Sovereignty of the Individual. It does not help the mat- 
ter to assert that it is an irreligious or a very immoral act to do this, or that, or the 
other thing. Protestantism neither asserts or denies that. It merely asserts that 
there is no power to determine that question higher than the Individual himself. 
It does not help the matter to affirm that the Scriptures, or the law of God, deliv- 
ered in any form, have determined the nature and limits of marriage. Protestant- 
ism, again, neither denies that proposition nor affirms it. It merely affirms, again, 
that the Individual himself must decide for himself what the law of God is, and 
that there is no authority higher than himself to whose decision he can be required 
to submit. It is arrogance, self-righteousness, and spiritual despotism for me to 
assume that you have not a conscience as well as I, and that, if you regulate your 
own conduct in the light of that conscience, it will not be as well regulated in the 
sight of God as it would be if I were to impose the decisions of my conscience 
upon you. 

In general, however, Government still interferes with the marriage and parental 
relations. Democracy in America has always proceeded with due deference to the 
prudential motto, festina lente. In France, at the time of the first Revolution, Demo- 
cracy rushed with the explosive force of escapement from centuries of compression, 
point blank to the bull's eye of its final destiny, from which it recoiled with such 



The True Constitution of Government. 21 

force that the stupid world has dreamed, for half a century, that the vital principle 
of Democracy was dead. As a logical sequence from Democratic principle, the le- 
gal obligation of marriage was sundered, and the Sovereignty of the Individual 
above the institution was vindicated. That the principle of Democracy is, poten- 
tially, still the same will appear upon slight examination. Democracy denies all 
power to Government in matters of religion. No Democratic Government does, 
therefore, or can base its interference with marriage upon the religious ground. It 
defines marriage to be, and regards it as being, a mere civil contract. It justifies 
its own interference with it upon the same ground that it justifies its interference 
with other contracts, — namely, to enforce the civil obligations connected with it, 
and to insure the maintenance of children. But here, as in the case of ordinary 
obligations, if the conviction obtains that different conditions of society will render 
the present relations of property between husband and wife unnecessary, and se- 
cure, by the equitable distribution and general abundance of wealth, a universal 
deference on the part of parents to the dictates of nature in behalf of children, 
Democracy will cease to make this subject an exception to her dominant principles. 
A tendency to change these conditions is already shown in the passage of laws to 
secure to the wife an independent or individual enjoyment of property. Already 
the observation is made, too, that children are never abandoned among the wealthy 
classes, and hence the natural inference that the scientific production, the equitable 
distribution, and the economical employment of wealth would render human laws 
unnecessary to enforce the first mandate of nature, — hospitality and kindness to- 
ward offspring. The doctrine is already considerably diffused that the union of 
the sexes would be, not only more pure, but more permanent, in the absence, under 
favorable circumstances, of all legal interference. But whether that be so or not is 
not now the question. I am merely asserting that the inevitable tendency of De- 
mocracy, like that of Protestantism, is toward abandoning this subject to the sover- 
eign determination of the Individual, and that Democracy in this country will 
attain, only more leisurely, the same point to which it went at a single leap, and 
from which it rebounded, in France. 

It is far less obvious, judging from the practical exhibition which it has hitherto 
made of itself, that the essential principle of Socialism is, equally with that of Pro- 
testantism and Democracy, the Individual Sovereignty. Indeed, Socialism has 
been attacked and resisted more vigorously than from any other cause in conse- 
quence of an instinctive perception that the measures hitherto proposed by it sap 
the freedom of the Individual. The connected interests and complicated artificial 
organization proposed by Fourier, and the renunciation of independent ownership 
contemplated by Communism, have been severely criticised and denounced, and 
the most so, perhaps, by those who are the most thoroughly imbued with the Pro- 
testant and Democratic idea of Individuality. To understand this apparent dis- 
crepancy we must distinguish the leading idea of Socialism from the methods 



22 The Science of Society. 

proposed by its advocates. The two are quite distinct from each other, and it may 
be that Socialism has mistaken its measures, as every human enterprise is liable 
to do. 

Socialism demands the proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor. It demands 
that the interests of all shall be so arranged that they shall cooperate, instead of 
clashing with and counteracting each other. It demands economy in the produc- 
tion and uses of wealth, and the consequent abolition of wretchedness and poverty. 
To what end does it make these demands? Clearly it is in order that every human 
being shall be in the full possession, control, and enjoyment of his own person and 
modes of seeking happiness, without foreign interference from any quarter whatso- 
ever. This, then, is the spirit of Socialism, and it is neither more nor less than a 
still broader and more comprehensive assertion of the doctrine of the inherent Sov- 
ereignty of the Individual. The Socialist proposes association and combined inter- 
ests merely as a means of securing that which he aims at, — justice, cooperation, 
and the economies of the large scale. Hence it follows that the Democrat resists* 
and the Socialist advocates Association and Communism for precisely the same rea- 
son. It is because both want identically the same thing. The Democrat sees in, 
connected interests a fatal stroke at his personal liberty, — the unlimited sover-j 
eignty over his own conduct, — and dreads the subjection of himself to domestic 
legislation, manifold committees, and continual and authorized espionage and cri- 
ticism. The Socialist sees, in these same arrangements, abundance of wealth 
fairly distributed among all, and a thousand beneficent results which he knows to 
be essential conditions to the possession or exercise of that very Sovereignty of the 
Individual. Each has arrived at one half the truth. The Socialist is right in as 
serting that all the conditions which he demands are absolutely essential to th 
development of the individual selfhood. He is wrong in proposing such a fak 
surrender of Individual liberty for their attainment as every form of amalgamate 
interests inevitably involves. The Democrat is negatively wrong in omitting fron 
his programme the absolute necessity for harmonic social relations, — wrong in 
supposing that there can always be a safe and legitimate exercise of those rights 
which he declares to be inalienable, short of those superior domestic arrangements 
which the Socialist demands. It is futile, for example, to talk of removing the 
restraints of law from marriage, thus guaranteeing freedom in "the pursuit of hap- 
piness " in that relation, before the just reward of labor and the consequent preva- 
lence of general wealth shall have created a positive security of condition for women 
and children. Hence the blunder of Democracy in the old French Revolution, and 
hence the absolute dependence of Democracy, for the working out of its own prin- 
ciples, upon the happy solution of all the problems of Socialism. Hence, again, 
the natural affinity of Democracy and Socialism, and the reason why, despite of 
their mutual misunderstanding, they have recently fallen into each other's embrace, 
in France, resounding in the ears of terrified Europe the ominous cry, Vive la Be- 
publique Democratique et Sociale. 



The True Constitution of Government. li-J 

The blunder of Socialism is not in its end, but in its means. It consists in pro- 
pounding a combination of interests which is opposed by the individualities of all 
nature, which is consequently a restriction of liberty, and which is, therefore, especi- 
ally antagonistic to the very objects which Socialism proposes to attain. It is this 
which prevents the harmony of Democracy and Socialism, even in France, from 
becoming complete, and which renders inevitable the disruption of every attempted 
social organization which does not end disastrously in despotism, — the inverse 
mode in which nature vindicates her irresistible determination toward Individu- 
ality. Let that feature of the Socialist movement be retrenched, and a method of 
securing its great ends discovered which shall not be self-defeating in its operation, 
and from that point Socialism and Democracy will blend into one, and, uniting 
with Protestantism, lose their distinctive appellations in the generic term of Indi- 
vidual Sovereignty. 

Such a principle is already discovered. It is capable of satisfactory demonstra- 
tion that out of the adoption of a simple change in the commercial system of the 
world, by which cost and not value shall be recognized as the limit of price, will 
grow, legitimately, all the wealth-producing, equitable, cooperating, and harmoniz- 
ing results which Socialism has hitherto sought to realize through the combination 
or amalgamation of interests, while, at the same time, it will leave, intact, the in- 
dividualities of existing society, and even promote them to an extent not hitherto 
conceived of. It is not now, however, the appropriate time to trace out the results 
of such a principle. We are concerned at present with Individuality and the spi- 
rit of the age as connected with governmental affairs. 

It is already the axiom of Democracy that that is the best government which 
governs least, — that, in other words, which leaves the largest domain to the Indi- 
vidual sovereign. It may sound strange, and yet it is rigidly true, that nothing is 
more foreign to the essential nature of Democracy than the rule of majorities. 
Democracy asserts that all men are born free and equal, — that is, that every indi- 
vidual is of right free from the governing control of every other and of all others. 
Democracy asserts, also, that this right is inalienable, — that it can neither be sur- 
rendered nor forfeited to another Individual, nor to a majority of other Individuals. 
But the practical application of this principle has been, and will always be found 
to be, incompatible with our existing social order. It presupposes, as I have said, 
the preliminary attainment of the conditions demanded by Socialism. The rule of 
majorities is, therefore, a compromise enforced by temporary expediency, — a sort 
pi half-way station-house between Despotism, which is Individuality in the concrete, 
and the Sovereignty of every Individual, which is Individuality in the discrete 
Eorm. 

Genuine Democracy is identical with the no-government doctrine. The motto 
bo which I have alluded looks directly to that end. Finding obstacles in the pre- 
sent social organization to the realization of its theory, Democracy has called a halt 



24 The Science of Society. 

for the present, and consented to a truce. The no-government men of our day are 
practically not so wise, while they are theoretically more consistent. They are, in 
fact, the genuine Democrats. It is they who are fairly entitled to the soubriquet 
of "The unterrified Democracy." They fearlessly face all consequences, and push 
their doctrine quite out to its logical conclusions. In so doing, they repeat the 
blunder which was committed in France. They insist upon no government higher 
than that of the Individual, while they leave in existence those causes which im- 
peratively demand, and will always demand so long as they exist, the intervention 
of just such restrictive governments as we now have. 

It results from all that has been said that the essential principle of Protestant- 
ism, of Democracy, and of Socialism, is one and the same; that it is identical with 
what is called the spirit of the present age; and that all of them are summed up 
in the idea of the absolute supremacy of the Individual above all human institutions. 

What, then, the question returns, is to be the upshot of this movement? If every 
department of modern reform is imbued with one and the same animating princi- 
ple ; if there be already an obvious convergence, and, prospectively, an inevitable 
conjunction and cooperation of the three great modern revolutionary forces, Pro- 
testantism, Democracy, and Socialism; if, even now, in their disjointed and semi- 
antagonistic relations, they prove more than a match for hoary conservatism; if, 
in addition, material inventions and reforms of all sorts concur in the same direc- 
tion ; if, in fine, the spirit of the age, or, more properly, of modern times, and which 
we recognize also as the spirit of human improvement, tends continually and with 
accelerated velocity toward the absolute Individualization of human affairs, — what 
is the inevitable goal to be ultimately reached? I have said that in religious af- 
fairs the end must be that every man shall be his own sect. This is the simple 
meaning of Protestantism, interpreted in the light of its own principles. If the 
occasion were appropriate, it would be a glorious contemplation to dwell upon that 
more perfect harmony which will then reign among mankind in the religious sphere, 
— a unity growing out of infinite diversity, and universal deference for the slight- 
est Individualities of opinion in others, transcending in glory that hitherto sought 
by the Church in artificial organizations and arbitrary creeds, as far as the new 
heavens and the new earth will excel the old. 

Socialism demands, and will end by achieving, the untrammeled selfhood of the 
Individual in the private relations of life, but out of that universal selfhood shall 
grow the highest harmonies of social relationship. It is not these subjects, how- 
ever, that are now specially appropriate. Let us restrict our specific inquiry to the 
remaining one of the three spheres of human affairs which we have in the general 
view considered conjointly, — namely, that which relates to human government. 

Is it within the bounds of possibility, and, if so, is it within the limits of rational 
anticipation, that all human governments, in the sense in which government is 
now spoken of, shall pass away, and be reckoned among the useless lumber of an 



The True Constitution of Government. 25 

experimental age, — that forcible government of all sorts shall, at some future day, 
perhaps not far distant, be looked back upon- by the whole world, as we in America 
now look back upon the maintenance of a religious establishment, supposed in other 
times, and in many countries still, to be essential to the existence of religion among 
men ; and as we look back upon the ten thousand other impertinent interferences 
of government, as government is practised in those countries where it is an insti- 
tution of far more validity and consistency than it has among us? Is it possible, 
and, if so, is it rationally probable, that the time shall ever come when every man 
shall be, in fine, his own nation as well as his own sect? Will this tendency to uni- 
versal enfranchisement — indications of which present themselves, as we have seen, 
in exuberant abundance on all hands in this age — ultimate itself, by placing the 
Individual above all political institutions, — the man above all subordination to 
municipal law? 

To put ourselves in a condition to answer this inquiry with some satisfactory 
degree of certainty, we must first obtain a clear conception of the necessities out 
of which government grows; then of the functions which government performs; 
then of the specific tendencies of society in relation to those functions; and, finally, 
of the legitimate successorship for the existing governmental institutions of man- 
kind. 

I must apologize as well for the incompleteness as for the apparent dogmatism 
of any brief exposition of this subject. I assert that it is not only possible and ra- 
tionally probable, but that it is rigidly consequential upon the right understanding 
oi the constitution of man, that all government, in the sense of involuntary restraint 
upon the Individual, or substantially all, must finally cease, and along with it the 
whole complicated paraphernalia and trumpery of Kings, Emperors, Presidents, 
Legislatures, and Judiciary. I assert that the indicia of this result abound in ex- 
isting society, and that it is the instinctive or intelligent perception of that fact by 
those who have not bargained for so much which gives origin and vital energy to 
the reaction in Church and State and social life. I assert that the distance is less 
today forward from the theory and practice of Government as it is in these United 
States, to the total abrogation of all Government above that of the Individual, than 
it is backward to the theory and practice of Government as Government now is in 
the despotic countries of the old world. 

The reason why apology is demanded is this : So radical a change in govern- 
mental affairs involves the concurrence of other equally radical changes in social 
habits, commerce, finance, and elsewhere. I have shown already, I think, that De- 
mocracy would have ended in that, had it not been obstructed by the want of cer- 
tain conditions which nothing but the solution of the problems of Socialism can 
afford. To discuss the changes which must occur in every department of life, in 
order to render this revolution in Government practicable, and to prove that those 
changes now exist in embryo, would be to embrace the whole field of human con- 



26 The Science of Society. 

cerns. That is clearly impossible in the compass of a lecture. But it is equally 
impossible to adjust the radical changes which I foretell in Government to the no- 
tion of the permanency of all other institutions in their present forms. What, then, 
can be done in this dilemma? I am reduced to a method of treating the subject 
which demands apology, both for incompleteness and apparent dogmatism. I per- 
ceive no possible method open to me but that of segregating the subject of Govern- 
ment from its connection with other departments of life, and deducing from 
principles and rational grounds of conjecture the changes which it is destined to 
undergo; and when those changes involve the necessity of other and corresponding 
changes elsewhere, to assert, as it were, dogmatically, without stopping to adduce 
the proofs, that these latter changes are also existing in embryo, or actually pro- 
gressing. 

I return now to the necessities out of which Government grows. These are in 
the broadest generalization : 1, To restrain encroachments, and, 2, To manage the 
combined interests of mankind. 

First, with regard to restraining encroachments and enforcing equity. Is there 
no better method of accomplishing this end than force, such as existing Govern- 
ments are organized to apply? I affirm that there is. I affirm that a clear scien- 
tific perception of the point at which encroachment begins, in all our manifold 
pecuniary and moral relations with each other, an exact idea of the requirements 
of equity, accepted into the public mind, and felt to be capable of a precise appli- 
cation in action, would go tenfold further than arbitrary laws and the sanctions of 
laws can go, in obtaining the desired results. In saying this, I mean something 
definite and specific. I have already adverted to the discovery of an exact, scien- 
tific principle, capable of regulating the distribution of wealth, and introducing 
universal equity in pecuniary transactions, — an exact mathematical gauge of hon- 
esty, — which, when it shall have imbued the public mind, and formed the public 
sentiment, and come to regulate the public conduct, will secure the products of la- 
bor with impartial justice to all, and tend to remove alike the temptations and the 
provocations to crime. What that principle does in the sphere of commerce is done 
in the social and ethical spheres by the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Indivi- 
dual. Both give to each his own, for it must be continually remembered that the 
doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual demands that I should sedulously 
and religiously respect your Individuality, while I vindicate my own. These two 
ground principles, with a few others incident thereto, once accepted and indwell- 
ing in the minds of men, and controlling their action, will dispense with force and 
forcible Government. The change which I contemplate in governmental affairs 
rests, therefore, upon these prior or concurrent changes in the commercial, ethical, 
and social spheres. Statesmen and jurists have hitherto dealt with effects instead 
of causes. They have looked upon crime and encroachment of all sorts as a fact to 
be remedied, but never as a phenomenon to be accounted for. They have never 



The True Constitution of Government. 27 

gone back to inquire what conditions of existence manufactured the criminal, or 
provoked or induced the encroachment. A change in this respect is beginning to 
be observed, for the first time, in the present generation. The superiority of pre- 
vention over cure is barely beginning to be admitted, — a reform in the methods 
of thought which is an incipient stage of the revolution in question. The highest 
type of human society in the existing social order is found in the parlor. In the 
elegant and refined reunions of the aristocratic classes there is none of the imper- 
tinent interference of legislation. The Individuality of each is fully admitted. 
Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and 
varied. Groups are formed according to attraction. They are continuously broken 
up, and re-formed through the operation of the same subtile and all-pervading in- 
fluence. Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect harmony, 
ever yet attained, in complex human relations, prevails under precisely those cir- 
cumstances which Legislators and Statesmen dread as the conditions of inevitable 
anarchy and confusion. If there are laws of etiquette at all, they are mere sug- 
gestions of principles admitted into and judged of for himself or herself, by each 
individual mind. 

Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of humanity, with all the in- 
numerable elements of development which the present age is unfolding, society 
generally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade of perfection as cer- 
tain portions of society, in certain special relations, have already attained? 

Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by specific legislation. Let 
the time which each gentleman shall be allowed to speak to each lady be fixed by 
law ; the position in which they should sit or stand be precisely regulated ; the sub- 
jects which they shall be allowed to speak of, and the tone of voice and accompa- 
nying gestures with which each may be treated, carefully defined, all under pretext 
of preventing disorder and encroachment upon each other's privileges and rights, 
and can any thing be conceived better calculated or more certain to convert social 
intercourse into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion? 

It is precisely in this manner that municipal legislation interferes with and pre- 
vents the natural organization of society. Mankind legislate themselves into con- 
fusion by their effort to escape it. Still, a state of society may perhaps be 
conceived, so low in social development that even the intercourse of the parlor 
could not be prudently indulged without a rigid code of deportment and the pre- 
sence of half a dozen bailiffs to preserve order. I will not deny, therefore, that 
Government in municipal affairs is, in like manner, a temporary necessity of un- 
developed society. What I affirm is that along with, and precisely in proportion 
to, the social advancement of a people, that necessity ceases, so far as concerns 
the first of the causes of Government referred to, — the necessity for restraining 
encroachments. 

The second demand for Government is to manage the combined interests of 



28 The Science of Society. 

society. But combined or amalgamated interests of all sorts are opposed to Indi- 
viduality. The Individuality of interests should be as absolute as that of persons. 
Hence the number and extent of combined interests will be reduced with every 
step in the genuine progress of mankind. The cost principle will furnish in its 
operation the means of conducting the largest human enterprises, under Individual 
guidance and control. It strips capital of its iniquitous privilege of oppressing la- 
bor by earning an income of its own, in the form of interest, and places it freely 
at the disposal of those who will preserve and administer it best, upon the sole con- 
dition of returning' it unimpaired, but without augmentation, at the appropriate 
time, to its legitimate owners. 

A glance at the functions which Government actually performs, and the specific 
tendencies which society now exhibits in relation to those functions, will confirm 
the statement that all, or most of, the combined interests of society will be finally 
disintegrated and committed to individual hands. It is one of the acknowledged 
functions of Government, until now, to regulate commerce. But, as we have al- 
ready seen, the spirit of the age demands that Government shall let commerce 
alone. In this country, an important Bureau of the Executive Department of Gov- 
ernment is the Land Office. But the public domain is, we have seen, already de- 
manded by the people, and the Land Office will have to be dispensed with. The 
Army and Navy refer to a state of international relations of which every thing be- 
gins to prognosticate the final extinction. The universal extension of commerce 
and intercommunication, by means of steam navigation, railroads, and the mag- 
netic telegraph, together with the general progress of enlightenment, are rapidly 
obliterating natural boundaries, and blending the human family into one. The 
cessation of war is becoming a familiar idea, and with the cessation of war armies 
and navies will cease of course to be required. It is probable that even the exist- 
ing languages of the earth will melt, within another century or two, into one com- 
mon and universal tongue, from the same causes, operating upon a more extended 
scale, as those which have blended the dialects of the different counties of England, 
of the different departments of France, and of the kingdoms of Spain into the Eng- 
lish, the French, and the Spanish languages respectively. We have premonitions 
of the final disbanding of the armies and navies of the world in the substitution 
of a citizen militia, in the growing unpopularity of even that ridiculous shadow of 
an army, the militia itself, and in the substitution of the merchant steamship witli 
merely an incidental warlike equipment instead of the regular man-of-war. The 
Navy and War Departments of Government will thus be dispensed with. The 
State Department now takes charge of the intercourse of the nation with foreign 
nations. But with the cessation of war there will be no foreign nations, and con- 
sequently the State or Foreign Department may in turn take itself away. Patriot- 
ism will expand into philanthropy. Nations, like sects, will dissolve into the 
individuals who compose them. Every man will be his own nation, and, preserving 



The True Constitution of Government. 20 

his own sovereignty and respecting the sovereignty of others, he will be a nation at 
peace with all others. The term, " a man of the world," reveals the fact that it is 
the cosmopolite in manners and sentiments whom the world already recognizes as 
the true gentleman, — the type and leader of civilization. The Home Department 
of Government is a common receptacle of odds and ends, every one of whose func- 
tions would be better managed by Individual enterprise, aud might take itself away 
with advantage any day. The Treasury Department is merely a kind of secretory 
gland, to provide the means of carrying on the machinery of the other Depart- 
ments. When they are removed, it will of course have no apology left for continu- 
ing to exist. Finances for administering Government will no longer be wanted 
when there is no longer any Government to administer. The Judiciary is, in fact, 
a branch of the Executive, and falls of course, as we have seen, with the introduc- 
tion of principles which will put an end to aggression and crime. The Legislature 
enacts what the Executive and Judiciary execute. If the execution itself is unne- 
cessary, the enactment of course is no less so. Thus, piece by piece, we dispose of 
the whole complicated fabric of Government, which looms up in such gloomy 
grandeur, overshadowing the freedom of the Individual, impressing the minds of 
men with a false conviction of its necessity, as if it were, like the blessed light of 
day, indispensable to life and happiness. 

There is abundant evidence to the man of reflection that what we have thus per- 
formed in imagination is destined to be rapidly accomplished in fact. There is, 
perhaps, no one consideration which looks more directly to that consummation 
than the growing unpopularity of politics, in every phase of the subject. In 
America this fact is probably more obvious than anywhere else. The pursuit of 
politics is almost entirely abandoned to lawyers, and generally it is the career of 
those who are least successful in that profession. The general repugnance of the 
masses of mankind for that class of the community, by which they testify an in- 
stinctive appreciation of the outrage upon humanity committed by the attempt to 
reduce the impertinent interference of legislation to a science, and to practise it as 
a learned profession, is intensified, in the case of the politician, by the element of 
contempt. In the sham Democracies, wherein majorities govern, the condition of the 
office-seeker and of the office-holder is alike and peculiarly unfortunate. Defeated, 
he is consigned unceremoniously, by popular opinion, to the category of the "poor 
devil." Successful, he is denounced as a political hack. His position is preemi- 
nently precarious. Whatever veneration attaches still to the manufacturers and 
executors of law among us is mostly traditionary. So much of the popular estima- 
tion of the men whose business is governing their fellow-men as is the indigenous 
growth of our institutions is essentially disrespectful. The politician, in a republic, 
is a man whose business it is to please everybody, and who, consequently, has no 
personality of his own, and this, here and now, in a country and age in which dis- 
tinctive personality is becoming the type and model of society. It is regarded to- 



30 The Science of Society. 

day as a misfortune, in the families of respectable tradespeople, if a son of any 
promise has an unlucky turn for political preferment. Those who execute the laws 
are in little better plight than those who make them. Recently, throughout most 
of the States, when changes have been made in the fundamental law, the tenure of 
office of judges of all ranks has been reduced to a short period of from two to four 
years, and the office rendered elective. Such is the fearful descent upon which the 
dignity of powdered wigs is fairly launched in Republican America, Judges, Chan- 
cellors, and Chief Justices entering the canvass, at short intervals, for returns to 
the Bench, and shaking hands with greasy citizens as the price of judicial author- 
ity. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, or that no man is great to his valet 
de chambre. When the inhabitants of a heathen country begin to treat their priests 
and their wooden divinities with contemptuous familiarity, wise men see that the 
power of Paganism is broken, and the Medicine-man, the Fetish, or the Juggernaut 
must soon give place to some more rational conception of the religious idea. At 
the ratio of depreciation actually progressing, office-holding of all sorts, in these 
United States, from the president down to the constable, will, in a few years more, 
be ranked in the public mind as positively disreputable. In the higher condition 
of society, toward which mankind is unconsciously advancing, men will shun all 
responsibility for and arbitrary control over the conduct of others as sedulously as 
during past ages they have sought them as the chief good. Washington declined 
to be made king, and the whole world has not ceased to make the welkin ring with 
laudations of the disinterested act. The time will come yet when the declinature, 
on all hands, of every species of governmental authority over others will not even 
be deemed a virtue, but simply the plain dictate of enlightened self-interest. The 
sentiment of the poet will then be recognized as an axiom of philosophy, 

Whoever mounts the throne, — King, Priest, or Prophet, — 
Man alike shall groan. 

Carlyle complains, in the bitterness of his heart, that the true kings and gov- 
ernors of mankind have retired in disgust from the task of governing the world, 
and betaken themselves to the altogether private business of governing themselves.' 
Whenever the world at large shall become as wise as they, when all men shall be 
content to govern themselves merely, then, and not till then, will "The True Con- 
stitution of Government" begin to be installed. Carlyle has but discovered the 
fact that good men are withdrawing from politics, without penetrating the rationale 
of-the phenomenon. He may call upon them in vain till he is hoarse to return to 
the arena of a contest which has been waged for some six thousand years or so, 
with continuous defeat, at a time when they are beginning to discover that the 
whole series of bloody conflicts has been fought with windmills instead of giants, 
and that what the world wants, in the way of government, is letting alone. 

But what then? Have we arrived at the upshot of the whole matter when we 



The True Constitution of Government. 31 

have, in imagination, swept all the actual forms of Government out of existence? 
Is human society, in its mature and normal condition, to be a mere aggregation of 
men and women, standing upon the unrelieved dead level of universal equality? 
Is there to be no homage, no rank, no honors, no transcendent influence, no power, 
in fine, exerted by any one man over his fellow-men ? Will there be nothing sub- 
stantially corresponding to, and specifically substituted for, what is now known 
among men as Human Government? 

This is the question to which we are finally conducted by the current of our in- 
vestigations, and to this question I conceive the answer to be properly affirmative. 
Had I not believed. so, there would have been no propriety in the title, "The True 
Constitution of Government," under which I announced this discourse. It might 
be thought by some a sufficient answer to the question that principles, and not men, 
will then constitute the Government of mankind. So vague a statement, however, 
does not give complete satisfaction to the inquisitive mind, nor does it' meet the 
interrogatory in all its varying forms. We wish to know what will be the positions, 
relatively to each other, into which men will be naturally thrown by the operation 
of that perfect liberty which will result from the prevalence and toleration of uni- 
versal Individuality. We desire to know this especially, now, with reference to 
that class of the mutual relations of men which will correspond most exactly to 
the relations of the governors and the governed. 

Negatively, it is certain that in such a state of society as that which we are now 
contemplating no influence will be tolerated, in the place of Government, which is 
maintained or exerted by force in any, even the subtlest, forms of involuntary 
compulsion. But there is still a sense in which men are said to exert power, — a 
sense in which the wills of the governor and the governed concur, and blend, and 
harmonize with each other. It is in such a sense as this that the great orator is 
said to control the minds of his auditory, or that some matchless queen of song 
sways an irresistible influence over the hearts of men. When mankind graduate 
out of the period of brute force, that man will be the greatest hero and conqueror 
who levies the heaviest tribute of homage by excellence of achievement in any de- 
partment of human performance. The avenues to distinction will not be then, as 
now, open only to the few. Each individual will truly govern the minds, and 
hearts, and conduct of others. Those who have the most power to impress them- 
selves upon the community in which they live will govern in larger, and those who 
have less will govern in smaller spheres. All will be priests and kings, serving at 
the innumerable altars and sitting upon the thrones of that manifold hierarchy, 
the foundations of which God himself has laid in the constitution of man. Genius, 
talent, industry, discovery, the power to please, every development of Individuality, 
in fine, which meets the approbation of another, will be freely recognized as the 
divine anointing which constitutes him a sovereign over others, — a sovereign hav- 
ing sovereigns for his subjects, — subjects whose loyalty is proved and known, 



32 The Science of Society. 

because they are ever free to transfer their fealty to other lords. With the grow- 
ing development of Individuality even in this age, new spheres of honorable dis- 
tinction are continually evolved. The accredited heroes of our times are neither 
politicians nor warriors. It is the discoverers of great principles, the projectors of 
beneficent designs, and the executors of magnificent undertakings of all sorts who, 
even now, command the homage of mankind. While politics are falling into de- 
suetude and contempt, while war, from being the admiration of the world, is 
rapidly becoming its abhorrence, the artist and the artisan are rising into relative 
importance and estimation. Even the undistinguished workers, as they have 
hitherto been, shall hereafter hold seats as Cabinet Ministers in the new hierarchi- 
cal government, which shall shadow, in those days, with its overspreading magnifi- 
cence, the dwellings of regenerated humanity. In that stupendous administration, 
extending from the greatest down to the least things of human concernment, there 
shall be no lack of functionaries and no limit upon patronage. Of that social state, 
which opens the avenues of all honorable pursuits to all, upon terms of equity and 
mutual cooperation, it may be truly said, as was said by the Great Teacher, when 
speaking of another kingdom, — if indeed it be another, — "In my Father's house 
there are many mansions." The laudable ambition of all will then be fully grati- 
fied. There will be no defeated candidates in the political campaigns of that day. 
Where the interests of all are identical, even the superiority of another is success, 
and the glory of another is a personal triumph. 

A superficial observer might judge that there was more prosperity and power in 
a petty principality of Germany than there is in the United States of America, be- 
cause he sees more pomp and magnificence surrounding the court of a puppet 
prince, whom men call the ruler of that people. No one but an equally superficial 
observer will mistake the phantom, called Government, which resides in the Halls 
and Departments at Washington — the mere ghost of what such a Government once 
was, in its palmy days of despotism — for a nearer approximation to the true or- 
ganization of Government than that natural arrangement of society which divides 
and distributes the functions of governing into ten thousand Departments and 
Bureaus at the homes, in the workshops, and at the universities of the people. 

If that trumpery Government be called such, because it performs important pub- 
lic functions, then have we distinguished private individuals among us who are 
already preeminently more truly Governors than they. If the concern at Washing- 
ton is legitimately denominated a Government of the people, because it controls 
and regulates a Post Office Department, for example, then are the Harndens and 
Adamses Governors too, for they control and regulate a Package Express Depart- 
ment, which is a greater and more difficult thing. They carry bigger bundles, and 
carry them farther, and deliver them with more regularity and dispatch. It is 
stated, upon authority which I presume to be reliable, that Adams & Co.'s Express 
is the most extensive organization of any sort in the world, — that it is, in fact, ab- 



The True Constitution of Government. 33 

solutely world-wide ; and yet it is strictly an individual concern. As an instance 
of the superiority of administration in the private enterprise over the national com- 
bination, I was myself at Washington during the last winter, when the mails were 
interrupted by the breaking up of a railroad bridge between Baltimore and Phila- 
delphia, and when, for nearly two weeks, the newspapers of the Commercial 
Metropolis were regularly delayed, one whole day, on their way to the Political 
Metropolis of the country, while the same papers came regularly and promptly 
through every day by the private expresses. The President, Members of Congress, 
and Cabinet Ministers, even the Postmaster General himself, was regularly served 
with the news by the enterprise of a private individual, who performed one of the 
functions of the Government, in opposition to the Government, and better than the 
Government, levying tribute upon the very functionary of the Government who 
was elected, consecrated, and anointed for the performance of that identical func- 
tion. Who, then, was the true Governor and Cabinet Minister, the Postmaster 
General, who was daily dispatching messengers to rectify the irregularity, and is- 
suing bulletins to explain and apologize for it, or the Adams Express man, who 
conquered the difficulty, and served the public, when the so-called Government 
failed to do it? The fault is that the Government goes by rule, preordained in the 
form of law, and consequently has no capacity for adapting itself to the Individu- 
ality of an unforeseen contingency. It has not the Individual deciding power and 
promptitude of action which are absolutely necessary for such occasions. 

It is the actual performance of the function which is all that there is good in the 
idea of Government. All that there is besides that is mere restriction, and conse- 
quent annoyance and oppression of the public, as when our Government undertook 
to suppress those private expresses, which serve the public better than it. The 
point, then, is this : I affirm that every useful function, or nearly every one which 
is now performed by Government, and the use of which will remain in the more 
advanced conditions of mankind, toward which the present tendencies of society 
converge, can be better performed by the Individual, self-elected and self-author- 
ized, than by any constituted Government whatsoever; and further, since it is the 
performance of the function, and the influence which the performance of the func- 
tion exerts over the conduct, and to the advantage of men, which makes the true 
Governor, it follows, I affirm, that the Adams Express man was, in the case I have 
mentioned, the true Governor, and that the Postmaster General, and the whole in- 
numerable gang of Legislators and Executors of the law at his back, were the sham 
Governors, such as the world is getting ready to discharge on perpetual furlough. 

It is possible that there may be a few comparatively unimportant interests of 
mankind which are so essentially combined in their nature that some species of 
artificial organization will always be necessary for their management. I do not, 
for example, see how the public highways can be properly laid out and adminis- 
tered by the private individual. Let us resort, then, to science for the solution of 



34 The Science of Society. 

this anomaly, for every subject has its science, the true social relations of mankind 
as well as all others. The inexorable natural law which governs this subject is 
this : that nature demands everywhere an individual lead. Every combined inter- 
est must therefore come ultimately to be governed by an individual mind, to be 
intrusted, in other words, to a despotism. It is the recognition of this law which 
is embodied in the political axiom that "power is constantly stealing from the 
hands of the many into the hands of the few." It is this scientific principle, lying 
down in the very nature of things, which constitutes both the rationale of monarchy 
and its appropriate apology. The lesson of wisdom to be deduced from this prin- 
ciple is not, however, as our political leaders have preached to us, that " the price 
of liberty is eternal vigilance," — a liberty which is not worth possession if it can 
not be enjoyed in security, and a vigilance which is only required to be exercised 
in order to defeat the legitimate operation of the most universal and fundamental 
law of nature. The true lesson of political wisdom is simply this : that no inter- 
ests should ever be intrusted to a combination which are too important to be 
surrendered understandingly and voluntarily to the guidance of a despotism. Gov- 
ernment, therefore, in the present sense of the term, can never, from the very 
essential nature of the case, be compatible with the safety of the liberties of the 
people, until the sphere of its authority is reduced to the very narrowest dimen- 
sions, — never until the arbitrary institution of Government shall have shrunk into 
a mere commission, — a board of overseers of roads and canals, and such other un- 
important interests as experience shall prove can not be so readily managed by ir- 
responsible individual action. 

It is this latter alone which will then truly merit the imposing title of Govern- 
ment. There is a sense, as I have said, in which that term is fairly applicable to the 
natural organization of the interrelations of men. If Genin, or Leary, or Knox de- 
vises a new fashion for hats, and manufactures hats in the style so devised, and the 
style pleases you and me, and we buy the hats and wear them, therein is an example, 
an humble example, perhaps you will think, but still a genuine example, of true Gov- 
ernment. The individual hatter is self-elected to his function. I, in giving him 
the preference over another, express my conviction of his fitness for that function, 
of his superiority over others. I vote for him. I give him my suffrage. I confirm 
his election. The abstract statement of the true order of Government, then, is this : 
it is that Government in which the rulers elect themselves, and are voted for afterward. 

The uncouth and unscrupulous despot proclaims that he governs mankind in his 
own right, — the right of the strongest. The modernized and somewhat civilized 
despot announces that he governs by divine right; that he is the God-appointed 
ruler of the people, by virtue of the fact that he finds himself a ruler at all. The 
more modern Democratic Governor claims to rule by virtue of the will of a major- 
ity. The true Governor rules by virtue of all these authorizations combined. He 
rules in his own right, because he is self-elected, and exercises his function in ac- 



The True Constitution of Government. 35 

cordance with his own choice. He rules by authorization of the majority, because 
it is he who receives the suffrages of the largest number who governs most exten- 
sively, and, finally, he, of all men, can be appropriately said to rule by divine right. 
His own judgment of his own fitness for his function, confirmed by the approval 
of those whom he desires to govern, are the highest possible evidence of the divin- 
ity of his claim, of the fact, in other words, that he was created and designed by 
God himself for the most perfect performance of that particular function. 

What, then, society has to do is to remove the obstructions to this universal self- 
election, by every Individual, of himself, to that function which his own conscious- 
ness of his own adaptation prompts him to believe to be his peculiar God-intended 
office in life. Throw open the polls, make the pulpit, the school-room, the work- 
shop, the manufactory, the shipyard, and the store-house the universal ballot-boxes 
of the people. Make every day an election day, and every human being both a can- 
didate and a voter, exercising each day and hour his full and unlimited franchise. 

In order to this consummation two conditions are indispensably necessary : the 
first is the cordial and universal acceptance of this very principle of the absolute 
Sovereignty of the Individual, — each claiming his own Sovereignty, and each reli- 
giously respecting that of all others. The second is the equitable interchange of the 
products of labor, measured by the scientific law relating to that subject to which 
I have referred, and the consequent security to each of the full enjoyment and un- 
limited control of just that portion of wealth which he or she produces, the effect 
of which will be the introduction of general comfort and security, the moderation 
of avarice, and the supply of a definite knowledge of the limits of rights and 
encroachments. 

The instrumentalities necessary for hastening the adoption of these principles 
are likewise, chiefly, two: these are, first, a more intense longing for true and har- 
monic relations; and, secondly, a clear intellectual conception of the principles 
themselves, and of the consequences which would flow from their adoption. The 
first is a highly religious aspiration, the second is a process of scientific induction. 
One is the soul and the other the sensible body, the spiritual substance and the 
corporeal form, of social harmony. The teachings of Christianity have inspired 
the one, the illumination of science must provide the other. Intellectual resources 
brought to the aid of Desire constitute the marriage of Wisdom with Love, whose 
progeny is Happiness. 

When from the lips of truth one mighty breath 
Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze 
The whole dark pile of human mockeries, 
Then shall the race of mind commence on earth, 
And, starting fresh, as from a second birth, 
Man, in the sunshine of the world's new spring, 
Shall walk transparent, like some holy thing. 



36 The Science of Society. 

It would, perhaps, be injudicious to conclude this exhibit of the doctrine of the 
Individual Sovereignty, without a more formal statement of the scientific limit 
upon the exercise of that Sovereignty which the principle itself supplies. If the 
principle were predicated of one Individual alone, the assertion of his Sovereignty, 
or, in other words, of his absolute right to do as he pleases, or to pursue his own 
happiness in his own way, would be confessedly to invest him with the attributes 
of despotism over others. But the doctrine which I have endeavored to set forth 
is not that. It is the assertion of the concurrent Sovereignty of all men, and of all 
women, and, within the limits I am about to state, of all children. This concur- 
rence of Sovereignty necessarily and appropriately limits the Sovereignty of each. 
Each is Sovereign only within his own dominions, because he can not extend the 
exercise of his Sovereignty beyond those limits without trenching upon, and inter- 
fering with, the prerogatives of others, whose Sovereignty the doctrine equally 
affirms. What, then, constitutes the boundaries of one's own dominions? This 
is a pregnant question for the happiness of mankind, and one which has never, 
until now, been specifically and scientifically asked or answered. The answer, if 
correctly given, will fix the precise point at which Sovereignty ceases and encroach- 
ment begins ; and that knowledge, as I have said, accepted into the public mind, 
will do more than laws, and the sanctions of laws, to regulate individual conduct 
and intercourse. The limitation is this : every Individual is the rightful Sovereign 
over his own conduct in all things, whenever, and just so far as, the consequences 
of his conduct can be assumed by himself; or, rather, inasmuch as no one objects 
to assuming agreeable consequences, whenever, and as far as, this is true of the 
disagreeable consequences. For disagreeable consequences, endurance, or burden 
of all sorts, the term "Cost" is elected as a scientific technicality. Hence the 
exact formula of the doctrine, with its inherent limitation, may be stated thus: 
"The Sovereignty of the Individual, to be exercised at his own cost." 

This limitation of the doctrine, being inherent, and necessarily involved in the 
idea of the Sovereignty of all, may possibly be left with safety, after the limitation 
is understood, to implication, and the simple Sovereignty of the Individual be as- 
serted as the inclusive formula. The limitation has never been distinctly and 
clearly set forth in the announcements which have been made either of the Pro- 
testant or the Democratic creed. Protestantism promulgates the one single, bald, 
unmodified proposition that in all matters of conscience the Individual judgment 
is the sole tribunal, from which there is no appeal. As against this there is merely 
the implied right in others to resist when the conscience of the Individual leads 
him to attack or encroach upon them. It is the same with the Democratic pre- 
rogative of the "pursuit of happiness." The limitation has been felt rather than 
distinctly and scientifically propounded. 

It results from this analysis that, wherever such circumstances exist that a per- 
son can not exercise his own Individuality and Sovereignty without throwing the 



The True Constitution of Government. 37 

"cost," or burden, of his actions upon others, the principle has so far to be com- 
promised. Such circumstances arise out of connected or amalgamated interests, 
and the sole remedy is disconnection. The exercise of Sovereignty is the exercise 
of the deciding power. Whoever has to bear the cost should have the deciding 
power in every case. If one has to bear the cost of another's conduct, and just so 
far as he has to do so, he should have the deciding power over the conduct of the 
other. Hence dependence and close connections of interest demand continual con- 
cessions and compromises. Hence, too, close connection and mutual dependence 
is the legitimate and scientific root of Despotism, as disconnection or Individuali- 
zation of interests is the root of freedom and emancipation. 

If the close combination, which demands the surrender of our will to another, is 
one instituted by nature, as in the case of the mother and the infant, then the 
relation is a true one, notwithstanding. The surrender is based upon the fact that 
the child is not yet strictly an Individual. The unfolding of its Individuality is 
gradual, and its growing development is precisely marked, by the increase of its 
ability to assume the consequences of its own acts. If the close combination of 
interests is artificial or forced, then the parties exist toward each other in false rela- 
tions, and to false relations no true principle can apply. Consequently, in such 
relations, the Sovereignty of the Individual must be abandoned. The law of such 
relations is collision and conflict, to escape which, while remaining in the relations 
there is no other means but mutual concessions and surrenders of the selfhood. 
Hence, inasmuch as the interests of mankind have never yet been scientifically 
individualized by the operations of an equitable commerce, and the limits of en- 
croachment never scientifically defined, the axioms of morality, and even the pro- 
visions of positive legislation, have been doubtless appropriate adaptations to the 
ages of false social relations to which they have been applied, as the cataplasm or 
the sinapism may be for disordered conditions of the human system. We must 
not, however, reason, in either case, from that temporary adaptation in a state of 
disease to the healthy condition of society or the Individual. Much that is rela- 
tively good is only good as a necessity growing out of evil. The greater good is 
the removal of the evil altogether. The almshouse and the foundling hospital 
may be necessary and laudable charities, but they can only be regarded by the en- 
lightened philanthropist as the stinking apothecary's salve, or the dead flies, applied 
to the bruises and sores of the body politic. Admitted temporary necessities, 
they are offensive to the nostrils of good taste. The same reflection is applicable 
to every species of charity. The oppressed classes do not want charity, but jus- 
tice, and with simple justice the necessity for charity will disappear or be reduced 
to a minimum. So in the matter before us. The disposition to forego one's own 
pleasures to secure the happiness of others is a positive virtue in all those close 
connections of interest which render such a sacrifice necessary, and inasmuch as 
such have hitherto always been the circumstances of the Individual in society, this 



38 The Science of Society. 

abnegation of selfhood is the highest virtue which the world has hitherto con- 
ceived. But these close connections of interest are themselves wrong, for the very- 
reason that they demand this sacrifice and surrender of what ought to be enjoyed 
and developed to the highest extent. The truest and the highest virtue, in the 
true relations of men, will be the fullest unfolding of all the Individualities of 
each, and the truest relations of men are those which permit that unfolding of the 
Individualities of each, not only without collision or injury to any, but with mu- 
tual advantage to all, — the reconciliation of the Individual and the interests of 
the Individual with society and the interests of society, — that composite harmony, 
or, if you will, unity, of the whole, which results from the discrete unity and dis- 
tinctive Individuality of each particular monad in the complex natural organiza- 
tion of society. 

The doctrine of Individuality, and the Sovereignty of the Individual, involves, 
then, at this point, two of the most important scientific consequences, the one serv- 
ing as a guiding principle to the true solution of existing evils in society, and to 
the exodus out of the prevailing confusion, and the other as a guiding principle 
of deportment in existing society, while those evils remain. The first is that the 
Sovereignty of the Individual, or, in other words, absolute personal liberty, can 
only be enjoyed along with the entire disintegration of combined or amalgamated 
interests; and here the "cost principle" comes in to point out how that disintegra- 
tion can and must take place, not as isolation, but along with, and absolutely pro- 
ductive of the utmost conceivable harmony and cooperation. The second is that, 
while people are forced, by the existing conditions of society, to remain in the 
close connections resulting from amalgamated interests, there is no alternative but 
compromise and mutual concession, or an absolute surrender upon one side or the 
other. The innate Individualities of persons are such that every calculation based 
upon the identity of tastes, or opinions, or beliefs, or judgments, of even so many 
as two persons, is absolutely certain to be defeated, and as Nature demands an In- 
dividuality of lead, one must necessarily surrender to the other whenever the rela- 
tion demands an identity of action. To quarrel with that necessity is a folly. To 
deny its existence is a delusion. To enter such combinations with the expectation 
that liberty and Individuality can be enjoyed in them is a sore aggravation of the 
evil. Mutual recrimination is added to the inevitable annoyance of mutual restric- 
tion. Hence a right understanding of the scientific conditions under which alone 
Individuality can be indulged, a clear and intelligent perception of the fact that 
the collisions and mutual contraventions of the combined relation result from no- 
thing wrong in the associated Individuals, but from the wrong of the relation itself, 
goes far to introduce the spirit of mutual forbearance and toleration, and thus to 
soften the acrimony and alleviate the burden of the present imperfect and unscien- 
tific institutions of society. 

Hence, again, as self-sacrifice and denial to one's self of one's own abstract rights 



The True Constitution of Government. 39 

is an absolute necessity of the existing order of things, there is a mutual necessity 
that we claim that of each other, and, if need be, that we enforce the claim. Herein 
lies the apology for our existing Governments, and for force as a temporary neces- 
sity, and hence the doctrine of Individuality, and the Sovereignty of the Indi- 
vidual, while the most ultra-radical doctrine in theory and final purpose ever 
promulgated in the world, is at the same time eminently conservative in immediate 
practice. While it teaches, in principle, the prospective disruption of nearly every 
existing institution, it teaches concurrently, as matter of expediency, a patient and 
philosophical endurance of the evils around us, while we labor assiduously for their 
removal. So far from quarreling with existing Government, when it is put upon 
the footing of temporary expediency, as distinguished from abstract principle and 
final purpose, it sanctions and confirms it. It has no sympathies with aimless and 
fruitless struggles, the recrimination of different classes in society, nor with merely 
anarchical and destructive onslaughts upon existing institutions. It proposes no 
abrupt and sudden shock to existing society. It points to a scientific, gradual, 
and perfectly peaceable substitution of new and harmonious relations for those 
which are confessedly beset, to use the mildest expression, by the most dis- 
tressing embarrassments. 

I will conclude by warning you against one other misconception, which is very 
liable to be entertained by those to whom Individuality is for the first time pre- 
sented as the great remedy for. the prevalent evils of the social state. I mean the 
conception that Individuality has something in common with isolation, or the se- 
verance of all personal relations with one's fellow-men. Those who entertain this 
idea will object to it, because they desire, as they will say, cooperation and brother- 
hood. That objection is conclusive proof that they have not rightly comprehended 
the nature of Individuality, or else they would have seen that it is through the In- 
dividualization of interests alone that harmonic cooperation and universal brother- 
hood can be attained. It is not the disruption of relationships, but the creation 
of distinct and independent personalities between whom relations can exist. The 
more distinct the personalities, and the more cautiously they are guarded and pre- 
served, the more intimate the relations may be, without collision or disturbance. 
Persons may be completely individualized in their interests who are in the most 
immediate personal contact, as in the case of the lodgers at an hotel, or they may 
have combined or amalgamated interests, and be remote from each other, as in the 
case of partners residing in different countries. The players at shuttlecock co- 
operate in friendly competition with each other, while facing and opposing each 
other, each fully directing his own movements, which they could not do if their 
arms and legs were tied together, nor even if they stood side by side. The game 
of life is one which demands the same freedom of movement on the part of every 
player, and every attempt to procure harmonious cooperation by fastening different 
individuals in the same position will defeat its own object. 



40 The Science of Society. 

In opposing combinations or amalgamated interests, Individuality does not op- 
pose, but favors and conducts toward cooperation. But, on the other hand, Indi- . 
viduality alone is not sufficient to insure cooperation. It is an essential element 
of cooperative harmony, but not the only one. It is one principle in the science 
of society, but it is not the whole of that science. Other elements are indispensable 
to the right working of the system, one of which has been adverted to. The error 
has been in supposing that, because the Individuality which is already realized in 
society has not ultimated in harmony, that Individuality itself is in fault. Instead 
of destroying this one true element of order, and returning to a worse condition 
from which we have emerged, the scientific method is to investigate further, and 
find what other or complementary principles are necessary to complete the well- 
working of the social machinery. 

Regretting that the whole circle of the new principles of society, of which the 
Sovereignty of the Individual is one, can not be presented at once, I invite you, 
Ladies and Gentlemen, as occasion may offer, to inform yourselves of what they 
are, that you may see the subject in its entire connection of parts. In the mean 
time I submit to your criticism, and the criticism of the world, what I have now 
offered, with the undoubting conviction that it will endure the ordeal of the most 
searching investigation, and with the hope that, however it may shock the pre- 
judices of earlier education, you will in the end sanction and approve it, and aid, by 
your devoted exertions, the inauguration of The True Constitution of Government, 
with its foundations laid in the Sovereignty of the Individual. 



THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY. 

No. a. 

COST THE LIMIT OF PRICE: 

A SCIENTIFIC MEASURE OF HONESTY IN TRADE 

AS ONE OF THE 

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN THE SOLUTION 
OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM. 



PREFACE. 



The preface of a book is always the last thing written, and generally the last thing read. 
The author is safe, therefore, in assuming that he is addressing, in what he says in this part 
of his work, those who are already familiar with the book itself. Availing myself of this 
presumption, I have a few observations to make of a somewhat practical nature in relation to 
the effects upon the conduct of the Individual which the acceptance of the principle herein 
inculcated should appropriately have. 

At the first blush it seems as if the Cost Principle presented the most stringent and inexor- 
able law, binding upon the conscience, which was ever announced, — as if no man desiring 
to be honest could continue for a day in the ordinary intercourse of trade and pursuit of 
profit. The degree to which this impression will remain with different persons, upon a 
thorough understanding of the whole subject, will be different according to their organiza- 
tions. There are powerful considerations, however, to deter any one from making a martyr 
of himself in a fruitless effort to act upon the true principle while living in the atmosphere, 
and surrounded by the conditions, of the old and false system. 

In the first place, it is impossible, in the nature of things, to apply a principle, the essence 
of which is to regulate the terms of reciprocity, where no reciprocity exists. The Equitist 
who should attempt to act upon the Cost Principle in the midst of the prevailing system, and 
should sell his own products with scrupulous conscientiousness at cost, would be wholly un- 
able to obtain the products of others at cost in return ; and hence his conduct would not 
procure Equity. He would at most obtain the wretched gratification of cheating himself 
knowingly and continuously. There is not space in the few pages of a preface to enter into 
a fundamental statement of the ethical principles involved in the temporary continuance in 
relations of injustice forced upon us by those upon whom whatever of injustice we commit is in- 
flicted. The question involved is the same as that of War and Peace. A nation desirous of be- 
ing at peace with all mankind, and tendering such relations to the world, may, nevertheless, 
be forced into war by the wanton acts of unscrupulous neighbors, Notwithstanding the over- 



44 The Science of Society. 

strained nicety of the sect called Friends, and of non-resistants in such hehalf , the common 
sentiment of enlightened humanity is yet in favor of resistance against unprovoked aggres- 
sion, while it is at the same time in favor of Universal Peace, — the entire cessation of all 
War. In like manner, the friends of Equity, the acceptors of the cost principle, do not in any 
case, so far as I am aware, purpose beggaring themselves, or abandoning any positions which 
give them the pecuniary advantage in the existing disharmonic relations of society, from any 
silly or overweening deference even for their own principles. They entertain rational and 
well-considered views in relation to the appropriate means of inaugurating the reign of 
Equity. They propose the organization of villages or settlements of persons who understand 
the principle, and desire to act upon it mutually. They will tender intercourse with "out- 
siders" upon the same terms; but, if the tender is not accepted, they will then treat with 
them upon their own terms, so far as it is necessary, or in their judgment best, to treat with 
them at all. They will hold Equity in one hand and " fight " in the other, — Equity for those 
who will accept Equity and reciprocate it, and the conflict of wits for those who force that 
issue. It is not their design to become either martyrs or dupes ; martyrdom being, in their 
opinion, unnecessary, and the other alternative adverse to their tastes. 

Still any view of the practical methods of working out the principle which may be here in- 
timated is of course binding upon no one. I state the spirit in which the principle is at pre- 
sent entertained, so far as I know, by those who have accepted it. Every individual must 
be left free, whether as an inhabitant of the world at large, or of an equitable village, to act 
under the dictates of his own conscience, his own views of expediency, his own sense of what 
he can afford to sacrifice in order to abide by the principle rather than sacrifice the principle 
instead ; or, in fine, of whatever other regulating influence he is in the habit of submitting 
his conduct to. He must be left absolutely free, then, to commit every conceivable breach 
of the principle itself, since absolute freedom is another of the essential principles of harmo- 
nic society. He who is in no freedom to do wrong can never, by any possibility, demonstrate 
the disposition to do right ; besides, whether the absolute or theoretical right is always the 
practical or relative right, is at least a doubtful question in morals, which each individual 
must be allowed to judge of solely for himself, — as of every other question of morals and 
personal conduct ichatsoever, — assuming the Cost. Hence, even in the act of infringing 
one of our circle of principles, the individual is vindicating another, — the Sovereignty of 
the Individual, — and in the fact of his differing from another, from the majority, or from 
all others, in the moral character of an act, he is merely illustrating another of the same cir- 
cle of principles, — namely, Individuality. 

It is found to be the most puzzling of all things to those who commence to examine these 
principles, beset as they are by the fogs of old ideas, that a social reorganization should be 
proposed without any social compact, the necessity of which has been alike and universally 
conceded both by Conservatives and Keformers. An illustration may render the matter clear. 
We do not bring forward a System, a Plan, or a Constitution, to be voted on, adopted, or 
agreed to, by mankind at large, or by any set of men whatsoever. Nothing of the sort ! 
We point out certain principles in the nature of things which relate to the order of human 
society ; in conforming to which mankind will find their affairs harmonically adjusted, and 
in departing from which they will run into confusion. The knowledge of these principles is 
science. It is the same with them as with the principles of Physiology. We teach them as 
science. We do not ask that they shall be voted upon or applied under pledges. Man cannot 
make or unmake them. So far as he knows them, and cordially accepts them as truths, he will 
be disposed to realize them in act. The human mind has a natural appetency for truth. If 
there are obstacles in the way of their realization, those obstacles will differ with the circum- 



Cost the Limit of Price. 45 

stances of each individual, and the Individual can alone judge of them. Those circumstances 
may change tomorrow, and then his capacity to act will change. His own appreciation of 
the subject may change likewise. There is Individuality therefore in his own different states 
at different periods. The man must be bound by no pledges which imply even so much as 
that he will be himself the same, in any given respect, at any future moment of time. It is 
the evil of compacts that the compact becomes sacred and the individual profane, — that man 
is held to be made for the Sabbath and not the Sabbath for man. 

Hereupon there is based the claim that these principles constitute in the appropriate aud 
rigid sense the Science of Society. It is the property of science that it does not say " By 
your leave." It exists whether you will or no. It requires neither compacts, constitutions, 
nor ballot-boxes. It is objectively true. It exists in principles and truths. If you under- 
stand and conform, well ; if not, woe be unto you. The consequences will fall upon you and 
scourge you. Hence the government of consequences is itself scientific, which no man-made 
government is. Men have sought for ages to discover the science of government; and lo! 
here it is, that men cease totally to attempt to govern each other at all! that they learn to 
know the consequences of their own acts, and that they arrange their relations with each 
other upon such a basis of science that the disagreeable consequences shall be assumed by the 
agent himself. 



46 The Science of Society. 



THE COST PRINCIPLE. 



CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY. — THE NATURE AND NECESSITY OF A SOCIAL SCIENCE. 

1. The question of the proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor, and other 
kindred questions, are becoming confessedly of immense importance to the welfare 
of mankind. They demand radical, thorough, and scientific investigation. Poli- 
tical Economy, which has held its position for the last half century as one of the 
accredited sciences, is found in our day to have but a partial and imperfect appli- 
cation to matters really involved in the production and distribution of wealth. Its 
failure is in the fact that it treats wealth as if it were an abstract thing having inter- 
ests of its own, apart from the well-being of the laborers who produce it. In other 
words, human beings, their interests and happiness, are regarded by Political Eco- 
nomy in no other point of view than as mere instruments in the production or ser- 
vice of this abstract Wealth. It does not inquire in what manner and upon what 
principles the accumulation and dispensation of wealth should be conducted in order 
to eventuate in the greatest amount of human comfort and happiness, and the most 
complete development of the individual man and woman. It simply concerns it- 
self with the manner in which, and the principles in accordance with which, men 
and women are now employed, in producing and exchanging wealth. It is as if the 
whole purposes, arrangements, and order of a vast palace were viewed as mere ap- 
pendages to the kitchen, or contrivances for the convenience of the servants, instead 
of viewing both kitchen and servants as subordinate parts of the system of life, 
gayety, luxury, and happiness which should appropriately inhabit the edifice, ac- 
cording to the design of its projectors. 

2. Hence Political Economy is beginning to fall into disrepute as a science (for 
want of a more extended scope and a more humanitarian purpose), and is liable even 
to lose credit for the good it has done. The questions with which it deals can no 
longer be regarded as an integral statement of the subject to which they relate. 
They are coining to be justly estimated as a part only of a broader field of scienti- 
fic investigation which has but recently been entered upon; and as being incapable 
of a true solution apart from their legitimate connections with the whole system 
of the social affairs of mankind. The subject-matter of Political Economy will, 
therefore, be hereafter embraced in a more comprehensive Social Science, which 






Cost the Limit of Price. 47 



will treat of all the interests of man growing out of their interrelations with each 
other. 

3. A criticism somewhat similar to that here bestowed upon Political Economy 
is applicable to Ethics. It has been the function of writers and preachers upon 
Morals, hitherto, to inculcate the duty of submitting to the exigencies of false so- 
cial relations. The Science of Society teaches, on the other hand, the rectification 
of those relations themselves. So long as men find themselves embarrassed by com- 
plicated connections of interest, so that the consequences of their acts inevitably 
devolve upon others, the highest virtue consists in mutual concessions and abnega- 
tion of selfhood. Hence the necessity for Ethics, in that stage of progress, to en- 
force the reluctant sacrifice, by stringent appeals to the conscience. The truest 
condition of society, however, is that in which each individual is enabled and con- 
strained to assume, to the greatest extent possible, the Cost or disagreeable conse- 
quences of his own acts. That condition of society can only arise from a general 
disintegration of interests, — from rendering the interests of all as completely indi- 
vidual as their persons. The Science of Society teaches the means of that indivi- 
dualization of interests, coupled, however, with cooperation. Hence it graduates 
the individual, so to speak, out of the sphere of Ethics into that of Personality, — 
cut of the sphere of duty or submission to the wants of others, into the sphere of 
integral development and freedom. Hence the Science of Society may be said to 
absorb the Science of Ethics as it does that of Political Economy, while it teaches 
far more exactly the limits of right by defining the true relations of men. (30, 37) 

4. The Science of Society labors indeed under a serious embarrassment from 
the fact of its comprehensiveness. The changes which the realization of the prin- 
ciples it unfolds would bring about in the circumstances of society make it differ 
from matters of ordinary science, in the fact of its immediate and complicated ef- 
fects upon what may be termed the vested interests of the community. It is diffi- 
cult for men to regard that as purely a question of science which they foresee is a 
radical reform and revolution as well. Still there are few persons who do not re- 
cognize the fact that there is some subtle and undiscovered cause of manifold evils, 
lying hid down in the very foundations of our existing social fabric, and which it 
is extremely desirable should be eradicated by some means, however much they 
may differ with reference to the instrumentalities through which the amelioration 
is to be sought for. The demand for a thorough investigation of the subject, and 
a settlement upon true principles of the relations of labor and capital especially, 
has come up during the last few years with more prominence than ever before, both 
in Europe and America, and has given rise to the various forms of Socialism which 
are now agitating the whole world. The real significance and tendency of Social- 
ism a*e stated in No. 1 of this series of publications, entitled, "The True Con- 
stitution of Government, in the Sovereignty of the Individual, as the Final 
Development of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism." 



48 The Science of Society. 

5. Indeed, the inquiry into social evils and remedies has not been generally 
viewed in the light of a science at all, and Reform of all sorts has become distaste- 
ful to many among the more intellectual portion of the community, for the reason 
that it has not hitherto assumed a more strictly scientific aspect. Neither quer- 
ulous complaints of the present condition of things, nor brilliant picturings of the 
imagination, nor vague aspirations after change or perfection, satisfy those whose 
mental constitution demands definite and tangible propositions, and inevitable lo- 
gical deductions from premises first admitted or established. 

6. There is another portion of the community who object to the investigation of 
all social questions upon nearly opposite grounds. They assume that the moral 
and social regeneration of mankind is not the sphere of science, but exclusively 
that of religion, — that the only admissible method of societary advancement is by 
the infusion of the religious sentiment into the hearts of men, and the rectification 
thereby of the affections of the individual, and through individuals of mankind at 
large. 

7. If this proposition be reduced to this statement, — that, if the spirit of every 
individual in a community is right, the spirit of that community, as an aggregate, 
must be right likewise, — the assertion is a simple truism; but society demands a 
form as well as a substance, a body no less than a soul ; and if that form or body 
be not a true outgrowth and exponent of the spirit dwelling within, it is affirming 
too much to say that such a society is rightly constituted. It is the province of 
science or the intellect to provide the form in which any desire is to be actualized. 
What Substance is to Form, the Love or Desire is to the intellectual conception of 
the modes of its realization. Religion deals with the heart or affections; in other 
words, with the love or desire, which makes up the substance or inherent constitu- 
ent quality of actions. Science which is born of Wisdom deals with the Forms of 
action, and teaches that such and such only accord with a given Desire and will 
eventuate in its realization. The development of the Love or Desire is first in 
order and first in rank; that of the corresponding Wisdom is nevertheless equally 
indispensable to the completeness of all that is good and true, in every department 
of rational being. 

8. To illustrate, let us suppose a nation overrun by foreign armies, and its very 
existence as an independent people threatened, while merely a feeble, heartless, 
and unorganized resistance is offered. A few patriotic and wise men assemble to 
consult upon the prospects and the necessities of their country. Immediately a 
dissension divides them in regard to the cause of their repeated failures to arrest 
the progress of the enemy. One party asserts that it is a want of military skill, 
that their country is entirely destitute of the knowledge of tactics and castrameta- 
tion, which, if understood, would be amply sufficient to enable them to display then- 
whole strength, and to make the most desperate and successful defence. The other 
party assumes opposite ground. They affirm that the fault is a want of patriotism 



Cost the Limit of Price. 49 

among the people. They cite abundant instances to prove that the inhabitants 
care very little by whom they are governed ; that they are, in fine, destitute of that 
spirit of devotion which is the essence or substance of warlike prowess. Thus di- 
vided in views, and jealous upon either side, they waste theii time and grow mu- 
tually embittered toward each other. At length, after tedious discussions and a 
long series of acrimonious recriminations, they arrive at the solution in the fact 
that both parties are right. The people are both destitute of patriotic devotion 
and of military science. Which, then, is the first want, in order, to be supplied? 
Clearly the former. Still both are equally essential to the organization of a com- 
plete defence. Having accorded in this view, they first disperse themselves as mis- 
sionaries over the whole country, preaching patriotism. By exciting appeals they 
arouse the dormant affections of the people for their fatherland, and alarm them 
for the safety of their wives and little ones. Their efforts are crowned with suc- 
cess. They witness the rising spirit of indignation against the invaders, and of 
martial heroism on all hands. It spreads from heart to heart, and throbs in the 
bosoms of the men, and even of the women and children. At this point a new evil 
displays itself. Fathers, husbands, and sons desert their ripening crops and their 
unprotected families, and rush together, a tumultuous, unarmed mob, clamorous for 
war. Confusion and distress succeed to apathy. The danger is increased rather 
than lessened. Famine and pestilence threaten now to be added to the fury of 
conquerors incensed by irritating demonstrations of a resistance powerless for de- 
fence. Then arises the demand for military science. At this point it is the part 
of the wise men who control the destinies of the people to abandon their mission- 
ary labor and assume the character of commanders and military engineers. Preach- 
ing is no longer in order. The man who from over-zeal persists in inflaming the 
minds of the populace, however well-intentioned, may prove the most deadly enemy 
of his country. Organization, the forming of companies, the drilling of squads, 
and the construction of forts are now in demand. Desire, the substance, subsists, 
demanding of Science the true Form of its manifestation. 

9. What Patriotism is to the Science of War for the purpose of defence, the re- 
ligious sentiment of Love is to the true Science of Society. The hearty recognition 
of human brotherhood, and the aspiration after true relations with God and man, 
are, at this day, widely diffused in the ranks of society. Christianity has produced 
its fruit in the development of right affection far beyond what the religious teach- 
ers among us are themselves disposed to credit it for. The demand is not now for 
more eloquence, and touching appeals, and fervent prayers to swell the heart to 
bursting with painful sympathies for suffering humanity. The time has come when 
preaching must give way to action, aspiration to realization, and amiable but fruit- 
less sympathetic affections to fundamental investigation and scientific methods. 
The true preachers of the next age will be the scientific discoverers and the prac- 
tical organizers of true social relations among men. The religious objection to 
Social Science is unphilosophical and suicidal. 



50 The Science of Society. 

10. There is another form in which this objection is sometimes urged by those 
who claim to understand somewhat the philosophy of progress. They affirm that, 
if the disposition to do right exist in the Individual or in the community, that' dis- 
position will inevitably conduct to the knowledge of the right way; in other words, 
that Wisdom is a necessary outgrowth of Love; and hence they deduce the conclu- 
sion that we need not concern ourselves in the least about discovering the laws of 
a true social order. The premise of this statement is true, while the conclusion is 
false. Taken together, it is as if one should assert that the sense of hunger natu- 
rally impels men to find the means of subsistence, and hence that no man need 
trouble himself about food. Let him sit down, quietly relying upon the potency 
of mere hunger to provide the means of the gratification of his appetite. 

11. The very fact of the Socialist agitation of our day, and the continued repe- 
titions in every quarter of the attempt to work out the problem of universal justice 
and harmony, are the very outgrowth in question of the indwelling desire for truer 
social relations, and never could have arisen but for the previous existence of that 
desire. The religionist who denies or ignores this inevitable sequitur from the 
spirit of his own teachings, is like the insane head that first mils and then disowns 
the hand that performs. 

Science — the rigid, exact, thorough, and inclusive Science of Society — is the 
only reliable guide to harmonic social relations among men. Neither the ardor of 
piety, nor the sentiment of brotherhood, nor the desperate devotion of generous 
enthusiasm, nor the repressive force of a rigid morality, offers any adequate rernedy 
for the existing evils of humanity. All these may be necessary, indispensable, nay, 
infinitely higher in rank or sanctity, if you will, than the other. But Love must 
have its complement in Wisdom. To divorce them is to be guilty of "partialism," 
just where it is of the utmost importance that the movement shall be integral and 
complete. 

12. Possibly this statement may enlighten some minds in relation to the exist- 
ing misunderstanding between the religionists and the Socialists. The former in- 
sist upon the spiritual element, the latter upon the scientific, as if the one or the 
other supplied the whole of what is requisite to a true development of society. 
Abstractly, the religionist may be said to be the nearest right, inasmuch as sub- 
stance is prior to form; but practically, and with reference to the present wants of 
society, the Socialist is nearer the truth. The spiritual element exists already, at 
least in embryo. The aspiration after better and truer relations is swelling daily, 
bursting the bands of existing institutions, and demanding knowledge of the true 
way, — an organized body of the Christian idea of human brotherhood which the 
living soul may enter, and wherein it may dwell. But neither without the other is 
complete. 

13. So powerful is becoming the sentiment of right that, unless the demand so 
created be followed by a complete discovery of the methods of its gratification, 



Cost the Limit of Price. 51 

there is abundant danger that justice as a blind instinct may prove more destruc- 
tive than organized oppression. As in the case of the misdirected or ill-directed 
patriotism in the illustration above, so every right sentiment and affection, without 
its complement of wisdom, is liable to become pernicious instead of beneficent in 
its action. If the love the mother bears her child leads her to feed it to excess on 
candies and comfits, to confine it in close, warm rooms, and guard it from contact 
with whatever may test and develop its powers of endurance, far better that she 
loved it less. She needs, in addition to love, a knowledge of Physiology. The 
Science of Society is to the Community what Physiology is to the Individual; or, 
rather, it is to the relations of the Individual with others what Physiology is to the 
relations of the Individual, so to speak, with himself. 

14. In the same manner the knowledge on the part of the laboring classes or 
their friends that they are under an oppressive and exhausting system of the rela- 
tions of capital and labor does not amount to a knowledge of the true system, into 
which, when known, it should be their object to bring themselves as rapidly as pos- 
sible. To discover that true system, by any other means than by long years, per- 
haps long generations, of fallacious and exhausting experiments, must be the work 
of genius, of true science, profound fundamental investigation, or any other name you 
choose to bestow upon that faculty and that process by which elementary truths 
are evolved by contemplating the nature of a subject. 

15. The Socialist agitations of the present day are, therefore, eminently danger- 
ous, as much so as the most violent reactionist ever imagined them, unless Science 
intervenes to point the way to the solution. Religion, nor the dictates of a strin- 
gent morality, will ever reconcile men who have once appreciated their inherent, 
God-given rights, to the permanency of an unjust system by which they are de- 
prived of them. Mere make-shifts and patched-up contrivances will not answer. 
False methods, such as Strikes, Trades' Unions, Combinations of interests, and ar- 
bitrary regulations of all sorts, are but temporary palliations ending uniformly in 
disappointment, and often in aggravation of the evils sought to be alleviated. A 
distinguished writer upon these subjects says truly: "Establish tomorrow an ample 
and fair Scale of Prices in every employment under the sun, and two years of quiet 
and the ordinary mutations of Business would suffice to undermine and efface 
nearly the whole. No reform under the present system, but a decided step out of 
and above that system, is the fit and enduring remedy for the wrongs and oppres- 
sions of Labor by Capital. And this must inevitably be a work of time, of pa- 
tience, of genius, of self-sacrifice, and true heroism." In other words, it is the 
province of Science to discover the true principles of trade as much as it is to dis- 
cover the laws of every other department of human concerns, and that discovery is 
an important part of the still more comprehensive Science of Society. 

16. If, then, some profound philosopher, whose high authority could command 
universal belief, were to step forward and announce the discovery of a simple prin- 



52 The Science of Society. 

ciple, which — adopted in trade or business — would determine with arithmetical 
certainty the equitable price to be charged for every article sold, and for every 
species of property, and for every hour of time bestowed upon its production and 
distribution, so that labor in every department should get precisely its due reward, 
and the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, and the consequent pov- 
erty and wretchedness of the masses, be speedily alleviated and finally removed; 
and if, in addition, the principle were such that its adoption and practical conse- 
quences did not depend upon convincing the intellects or appealing to the benevo- 
lence of the wealthy classes, but lay within the compass of the powers of the 
laboring men themselves ; if, still farther than this, the principle did not demand, 
as a preliminary, the extensive cooperation, the mutual and implicit confidence, the 
complicated arrangements, the extensive knowledge of administration, and the 
violent change in domestic habits, some one or other of which is involved in nearly 
everv proposition of Socialism, and for which the laboring classes are specially dis- 
qualified ; if, in one word, this simple principle furnished demonstrably, unequivo- 
cally, immediately, and practically, the means whereby the laboring classes might 
step out from under the present system, and place themselves in a condition of inde- 
pendence above that system, — would not this announcement come in good time; 
would it not be a supply eminently adapted to the present demand of the laboring 
masses in this country and elsewhere? 

With some misgivings as to the prudence of asserting such a faith, in limine, 1 
state my conviction that such a principle has been discovered and is now in the 
possession of a small number of persons who have been engaged in practically test- 
ing it, until its regulating and wealth-producing effects have been sufficiently, 
though not abundantly, demonstrated. 

17. Josiah Warren, formerly of Cincinnati, more recently a resident of Indi- 
ana, is, I believe, justly entitled to be considered the discoverer of the principle to 
which I refer, along with several others which he deems essential to the rectifica- 
tion of the social evils of the existing state of society. 

The principle itself is one which will not probably strike the reader, when first 
stated, as either very profound, very practicable in its application, very important 
in its consequences, and perhaps not even as equitable in itself. It requires thought 
to be bestowed on each of these points. You will find, however, as you subject it 
to analysis, as you trace it into its ten thousand different applications, to owner- 
ship, to rent, to wages, etc., that it places all human transactions relating to pro- 
perty upon a new basis of exact justice, — that is, it has the perfect, simple, but 
all-prevailing character of a universal principle. 

The question as to the method of commencing to put the principle in operation 
is a distinct one, and only needs to be considered after the principle itself is under- 
stood. I have already observed that it has been and is now being practically tested 
with entire success. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 53 

IS. This principle, put into a formula, is thus stated: "Cost is the Limit of 
Price." 

The counter principle upon which all ownership is now maintained and all com- 
merce transacted in the world is that " Value is the limit of price," or, as the prin- 
ciple is generally stated in the cant language of trade, "A thing is worth what it 
will bring." Between these two principles, so similar that the difference in the 
statement would hardly attract a moment's attention unless it were specially in- 
sisted upon, lies the essential difference between the whole system of civilized can- 
nibalism by which the masses of human beings are mercilessly ground to powder 
for the accumulation of the wealth of the few, on the one hand, and on the other, 
the reign of equity, the just remuneration of labor, and the independence and ele- 
vation of all mankind. 

19. There is nothing apparently more innocent, harmless, and equitable in the 
world than the statement that a "thing should bring what it is worth," and yet 
even that statement covers the most subtle fallacy which it has ever been given to 
human genius to detect and expose, — a fallacy more fruitful of evil than any other 
which the human intellect has ever been beclouded by. (130.) 

20. Value has nothing whatever to do, upon scientific principles, as demon- 
strated by Mr. Warren, with settling the price at which any article should be 
sold. Cost is the only equitable limit, and by cost is meant the amount of labor 
bestowed on its production, that measure being again measured by the painfulness 
or repugnance of the labor itself. (61, 65.) 

Value is a consideration for the purchaser alone, and determines him whether he 
will give the amount of the cost or not. (132.) 

21. This statement is calculated to raise a host of objections and inquiries. If 
one purchaser values an article more highly than another, by what principle will 
he be prevented from offering a higher price? How is it possible to measure the 
relative painfulness or repugnance of labor? What allowance is to be made for 
superior skill or natural capacity? How is that to be settled? How does this 
principle settle the questions of interest, rent, machinery, etc.? What is the na- 
ture of the practical experiments which have already been made ? etc., etc. 

22. These several questions will be specifically answered in this treatise upon 
" The Cost Principle," except the last, which will be more satisfactorily replied to 
by a work embodying the "Practical Details" of twenty-four years of continuous 
experiment upon the workings of this and the other principles related to it, and 
announced by Mr. Warren, which work Mr. Warren is now engaged himself in 
preparing for the press. These "Practical Details" will relate to the operations 
of two mercantile establishments conducted at different points, upon the Coxt 
Principle, to the education of children, to social intercourse, and, finally, to the 
complex affairs of a village or town which has grown up during the last four years, 
under the system of "Equitable Commerce," of which the Cost Principle is the 



54 The Science of Society. 

basis. This work upon " Practical Details " will contain, I may venture to affirm, 
from a personal knowledge of its character, a body of facts profoundly interesting 
to the philanthropic and philosophic student of human affairs. It must suffice for 
the present allusion to assert that there is no one of the circle of principles em- 
braced by Mr. 'Warren under the general name of "Equitable Commerce," or by 
myself under the name of " The Science of Society," which has not been patiently, 
repeatedly, and successfully applied in practice, in a variety of modes, long before 
it was announced in theory, — a point in which it is thought that these principles 
differ materially from all the numerous speculations upon social subjects to which 
the attention of the public has been heretofore solicited. 

23. The village to which I have referred is situated in the State of Ohio. It 
contains as yet only about twenty families, or one hundred inhabitants, having a 
present prospect of a pretty rapid increase of numbers. I will call it, for the sake 
of a name by which to refer to it, Trial ville, stating at the same time that this 
is not the real name of the village, which I do not venture to give, as it might be 
disagreeable to some of the inhabitants to have the glare of public notoriety at so 
early a day upon their modest experiment. It might also subject them to visits of 
mere curiosity, or to letters of inquiry, which, without their consent, I have not the 
right to impose upon them. Another village upon the same principles is about be- 
ing organized in the vicinity of New York. 

Under the sobriquet of Trialville I shall have occasion, however, to refer to 
the operations at the former of these villages, which have so far proved successful 
in a practical point of view that it is deemed, on the part of those most interested 
in this movement, to be a fitting time, now, to call the public attention more gene- 
rally to the results. The publication of these treatises is in fact the beginning of 
that effort, which, if the intentions of those of us who are engaged in the enter- 
prise do not fail of realization, will be more and more continuously and urgently 
put forth from this time forward. We believe that we have a great mission to 
fulfill, — a gospel of glad tidings to proclaim, — a practical and immediate solution 
of the whole problem of human rights and their full fruition to expound. While, 
therefore, we cannot and would not entirely conceal the enthusiastic feelings by 
which we are prompted in this effort, still, lest it may be thought that such senti- 
ments may have usurped the province of reason, we invite the most cautious inves- 
tigation and the most rigid scrutiny, not only of the principles we propound, but 
also of the facts of their practical working. While, therefore, I do not give the 
real name or exact location of our trial villages to the public at large, for the rea- 
sons I have stated, still we are anxious that all the facts relating to them shall be 
known, and the fullest opportunity for thorough investigation be given to all who 
may become in any especial degree interested in the subject. The author of this 
work will be gratified to communicate with all such, and to reply to such inquiries 
as they may desire to have answered, upon a simple statement of their interest in 



Cost the Limit of Price. 55 

the subject and then' wish to know more of it. The real name and location of our 
trial towns will be communicated to such, and every facility given for investigation. 
Arrangements are contemplated for organizing other villages upon the same 
principles, and establishing an equitable exchange of products between them. It 
is not the object of the present work, however, to enter into the history or general 
plan of the movement, but simply to elucidate a single principle of a new science 
embracing the field of Ethics and of Political Economy. 

24. It will be appropriate, in this preliminary statement of the subject, to guard 
against one or two misapprehensions which may naturally enough arise from the 
nature of the terms employed, or from the apparently disproportionate importance 
attached to a simple principle of trade. 

The term "Equitable Commerce" does not signify merely a new adjustment of 
the method of buying and selling. The term is employed, by Mr. Warren, to sig- 
nify the whole of what I have preferred to denominate the Science of Society, in- 
cluding Ethics, Political Economy, and all else that concerns the outer relations of 
mankind. At the same time the mutual interchange of products is, as it were, the 
continent or basis upon which all other intercourse rests. Society reclines upon 
Industry. Without it man cannot exist. Other things may be of higher import, 
but it is of primary necessity. Solitary industry does not supply the wants of the 
individual. Hence trade or the exchange of products. With trade intercourse be- 
gins. It is the first in order of the long train of benefits which mankind mutually 
minister to each other. The term "commerce" is sometimes synonymous with 
trade or traffic, and at other times it is used in a more comprehensive sense. For 
that reason it has a double appropriateness to the subjects under consideration. 
It is employed therefore in the phrase "Equitable Commerce," to signify, first, 
Commerce in the minor sense, as synonymous with "trade," and secondly, Com- 
merce in the major sense, as synonymous with the old English signification of the 
word, "conversation," — i. e., human intercourse of all sorts, — the concrete, or tout 
ensemble, of human relations. 

25. I will here show that these investigations take in the whole scope of Com- 
merce in the major sense, after which I will return to the particular consideration 
and elucidation of the single principle, "Cost is the Limit of Price," which 
does, indeed, chiefly or primarily relate to Commerce in the minor sense, although 
the modes in which it affects Commerce in the major sense are almost infinite. 

26. According to Mr. Warren, the following is The Problem to be Solved 
in all its several branches: 

1. "The proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor." 

2. " Security of person and pi'operty." 

3. " The greatest practicable amount of freedom to each individual." 

4. "Economy in the production and uses of wealth." 

5. "To open the way to each individual for the possession of land and all other 
natural wealth." 



56 The Science of Society. 

6. " To make the interests of all to cooperate with and assist each other, instead 
of clashing with and counteracting each other." 

7. " To withdraw the elements of discord, of war, of distrust and repulsion, and 
to establish a prevailing spirit of peace, order, and social sympathy." 

27. And according to him, also, the following principles are the means of the 
solution : 

I. "Individuality." 

II. "The Sovereignty of each Individual." 

III. "Cost the Limit op Price." 

IV. "A Circulating Medium, founded on the Cost of Labor." 

V. "Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand." 

28. The mere reading of this programme will suggest the immensity of the 
scope to which the subject extends. In the present volume I have selected a single 
principle, — the third among those above named, — and shall adhere to a pretty 
thorough exposition of it, rather than overload the mind of the reader by bringing 
into view the whole of a system, covering all possible human relations. A few 
minds may, from the mere statement of these principles, begin to perceive the 
rounded outlines of what is, as I do not hesitate to affirm, the most complete scien- 
tific statement of the problem of human society, and of the fundamental principles 
of social science, which has ever been presented to the world. Most, however, will 
hardly begin to understand the universal and all-pervading potency of these few 
simple principles, until they find them elaborately displayed and elucidated. At 
present I must take the broad license of asserting that they are universal prin- 
ciples, and referring the reader, for what I mean by a universal principle, to what 
I have to say of the one which I have selected for a particular explanation, — 
"Cost the Limit of Price." 

29. As a mere hint, however, in relation to the others, let us take the last, 
"Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand." This seems to be a formula 
relating merely, as, in fact, it does relate mainly, to ordinary commerce, — trade, — 
commerce in the minor sense. In that sense, it expresses an immense want of 
civilized society, — nothing less, as Carlyle has it, than a knowledge of the way of 
getting the supernumerary shirts into contact with the backs of the men who have 
none. But this same principle introduced into the parlor becomes likewise the 
regulator of politeness and good manners, and pertains therefore to commerce in 
the major sense as well. I am, for example, overflowing with immoderate zeal for 
the principles which I am now discussing. I broach them on every occasion. I 
seize every man by the button-hole, and inflict on him a lecture on the beauties of 
Equitable Commerce; in fine, I make myself a universal bore, as every reformer is 
like to be more or less. But at the moment some urbane and conservative old 
gentleman politely observes to me, " Sir, I perceive one of your principles is, ' The 
Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand.'" I take the hint immediately. My 



Cost the Limit of Price. 57 

mouth is closed. I perceive that my lecture is not wanted, — that he does not care 
to interest himself in the subject. There is no demand, and I stop the supply. 

But you are ready to say, Would not the same hint given in some other form 
stop the impertinence of over-zealous advocacy in any case? Let those answer who 
have been bored. But suppose it did, could it be done so gracefully, in any way, 
as by referring the offender to one of the very principles he is advocating, or which 
he professes? Again: grant that it have the effect to stop that annoyance, the 
hint itself is taken as an offence, and the offended man, instead of continuing the 
conversation upon some other subject that might be agreeable, goes off in a huff, 
and most probably you have made him an enemy for life. But, in my case, it will 
not even be necessary for the conservative old gentleman to remind me, — I shall 
at once recollect that another of my principles is, " The Sovereignty of the In- 
dividual." One of the highest exercises of that sovereignty is the choice of the 
subjects about which one will converse and upon which he will bestow his time; 
hence I recognize cordially his right to exclude my subject, and immediately, 
gracefully, and good-humoredly I glide off upon some other topic. Then, by a law 
of the human mind, which it is extremely important to understand, and practically 
to observe, if it be possible that there should ever arise a demand with him to hear 
any thing about that subject, my uniform deference for even his prejudices will 
hasten the time. Indeed, all conservative old gentlemen, who hate reform of all 
sorts as. they do ratsbane, would do well to make themselves at once familiar with 
these principles, and to disseminate them as the means of defending themselves. 
Do you begin to perceive that such a mere tradesman-like formula, at first blush, 
as "The Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand," becomes one of the high- 
est regulators of good manners, — a part of the ethics of conversation, — of the " Equi- 
table Commerce" of gentlemanly intercourse, — as well as what it seems to be, an 
important element of trade ; and do you catch a glimpse of what I mean, when I 
say that it is a universal principle of commerce in the major sense? 

30. The doctrine of Individuality is equally universal. I have only to say 
here that it means the next thing to every thing, when you come to its applications. 
It means, as applied to persons, that every human being has a distinct character 
or individuality of his own, so that any attempt to classify him with others, or to 
measure him by others, is a breach of his natural liberty ; and, as applied to facts, 
that no two cases ever occurred precisely similar, and hence that no arbitrary 
general rule can possibly be applied to cases not yet arisen. It follows, therefore, 
that all laws, systems, and constitutions whatsoever must yield to the individual, 
or else that liberty must be infringed; or, in other words, that the Individual is 
above Institutions, and that no social system can claim to be the true one, which re- 
quires for its harmonious operation that the Individual shall be subjected to the 
system, or to any institutions whatsoever. 

We are taught by it that all combinations of interest whatsoever are limitations 



58 The Science of Society. 

upon the exercise of the individuality of the parties, or restrictions upon natural 
liberty. Hence also, by Individuality, the true practical movement begins with a 
complete disintegration of all amalgamated interests, such as partnerships, in a 
manner peculiar to itself. Hence, again, to the casual observer, this movement 
seems to be in exact antagonism to Association, and the views of Socialism of all 
the various schools. A more thorough acquaintance with the subject will show, 
however, that this individualizing of all interests is the analysis of society, prelimi- 
nary to association as the synthesis, — as much association as is demanded by the 
economies, being a growth of that cooperation of interests — not combination or 
amalgamation — which results from the operation of the Cost Principle. (3, 37.) 

31. The Sovereignty oe the Individual grows out of the more fundamen- 
tal principle of Individuality, as stated in No. I. of this series. A special occa- 
sion called for that treatise, and limited it to a particular application. The 
extensive nature of the subject in its numerous ramifications will demand a sepa- 
rate work upon Individuality and the Sovereignty of the Individual, which, while 
they are distinguishable as principles, stand, nevertheless, closely related to each 
other. 

32. A Circulating Medium founded on the Cost of Labor is, perhaps, 
not so properly a principle as an indispensable instrument for carrying the Cost 
principle into practical operation. It is a monetary system, holding to the true or 
equitable system of Commerce a relation quite similar to that which specie a,nd 
bank notes now hold to the present false and dishonest system. The subject of 
equitable money will be treated of more at large in the subsequent chapters, and 
does not require any further explanation at this point. As such a circulating me- 
dium is one of the necessary conditions of working out the true societary results, 
it is classed with principles, along with the means of the solution. (69, 245.) 

33. It is claimed that within the circle of these five principles or efficient powers 
is found every condition of the complete development of a true social order, or, in 
other words, a full and perfect solution of the social problem stated above. Is that 
statement of the problem sufficiently comprehensive? Does it include, either di- 
rectly or consequentially, all which has ever been aimed at by social reformers of 
any school, and all which is requisite to the full harmony and beauty of human re- 
lations? If that be so, and if the assumption just stated be made good, both by 
exposition and practical results, then have we at length a theory of society strictly 
entitled to the appellation of a Science, — a movement, precise, definite, and conse- 
quential, adequate, on the one hand, to meet the demands of the most exacting 
intellect, and sufficiently beneficent, on the other, to gratify the desires of the most 
expansive philanthropy, while in its remoter results it promises to satiate the re- 
fined cravings of the most fastidious taste. 

34. This volume treats professedly upon the Cost Principle. Still each of the 
principles above stated will necessarily be referred to from time to time. It will 



Cost the Limit of Price. 59 

perhaps be well, therefore, that the particular discussion of the principle which I 
have selected for present consideration should be prefaced by a brief statement of 
the interrelations and mutual dependence of these several principles upon each 
other. 

It is especially appropriate that something should be shown which will bridge 
over the seeming gap between so metaphysical a statement as that of the Sover- 
eignty of the Individual, as set forth in the preceding Number, and the merely 
commercial consideration of an appropriate limit of price. An integral view of the 
connections of the different parts of this system of principles can only be a final 
result of a thorough familiarity with their detailed applications and practical ef- 
fects. At the same time the fact that they are connected and mutually dependent 
will appear upon slight examination. For the rest, I must take the license to as- 
sert, with great emphasis, the existence of so intimate a relation between them 
that, if any one of them is omitted, it is totally impossible to work out the pro- 
posed results. The others will remain true, but any one of them, or any four of 
them, are wholly inadequate to the solution. This connection may be established 
by beginning almost indifferently at any point in the circle. Let us assume, as a 
starting point, The Adaptation of the Supply to the Demand. 

35. By Adaptation of Supply to Demand is meant a sufficiency of any variety 
of product, present at every time and place, to meet the want for that particular product 
which may be felt at the same time and place. It is wholly from the defect of such ar- 
rangements, in the existing commercial system, as would secure such an adaptation 
of supply to demand, that society is afflicted with periodical famine or scarcity, or, 
on the other hand, with gluts of the market, and consequent sacrifice and general 
bankruptcy, and, far more important than all, because more continuous, with what 
is called an excess of labor in the various labor markets of the world, by which 
thousands of men and women able to work and willing to work are deprived of the 
opportunity to do so. There is no reason in the nature of the case why there 
should not be as accurate a knowledge in the community of the statistics of supply 
and demand as there is of the rise and fall of the tides, nor why that knowledge 
should not be applied to secure a minute, accurate, and punctual distribution of 
products over the face of the earth, according to the wants of various countries, 
neighborhoods, and individuals. The supposed excess of labor is no more an excess 
than congestion is an excess of blood in the human system. The scarcity of the circu- 
lating medium which is now in use, and which is requisite for the interchange of 
commodities, is regarded by those who have studied this subject profoundly as the 
principal difficulty in the way of such an adjustment, but that scarcity itself is 
only a specific form and instance of the general want of adaptation of supply to 
demand, which extends far beyond all questions of currency, — the supply of circu- 
lating medium being unequal to the demand for it, owing to the expensiveness of 
the substances selected for such medium, and their consequent total unfitness for 
the purpose. 



60 The Science of Society. 

36. It follows from what has been said that appropriate arrangements for the 
adaptation of supply to demand are a sine qua non of a true social order. But the 
existence of such arrangements is an impossibility in the midst of the prevalence 
of speculation. But speculation has always existed, and is inherent in the present 
commercial system, and consequently no adequate adjustment of supply to demand 
has ever been had, or can ever be had, while that system remains in operation. It 
is the business of speculation, and hence of the whole mercantile profession, to 
confuse and becloud the knowledge of the community upon this very vital point of 
their interests, and to derange such natural adjustment as might otherwise grow 
up, even in the absence of full knowledge on the subject, — to create the belief that 
there is excess or deficiency when there is none, and to cause such excess or defi- 
ciency in fact when there would otherwise be none, in order to buy cheap and sell 
dear. Speculation is not only the vital element of the existing system of Commerce, 
but it will always exist upon any basis of exchange short of the Cost Principle. The 
Cost Principle extinguishes speculation, as will be shown in the sequel. Herein, 
then, is the connection between these two of the five conditions of social order. 
(158.) 

37. Let us return now to The Sovereignty of the Individual. This has 
been shown in the previous work to be also a sine qua non of true human relations. 
The Sovereignty of the Individual, which is merely the complete enjoyment of 
personal liberty, the unimpeded pursuit by every individual, of his own happiness 
in his own way, and the development of his own inherent selfhood, is, in fact, the 
apex, or culminating point, of the true harmony of society. It was also demon- 
strated that this Sovereignty cannot possibly be indulged, without continual 
encroachments upon the equal Sovereignty of others, in any other mode than by a 
complete disintegration of interests, — a total abandonment of every species of 
combined or amalgamated ownership, or administration of property. Individual- 
ity of Character teaches, in this manner, that, in order to the harmonious exercise 
of the Sovereignty of the Individual, a disconnection of interests must be had, 
which is in turn nothing else than another application of the same all-pervading 
principle of Individuality. Such, then, is the intimate connection between Indivi- 
duality and the Sovereignty of the Individual. (3, 30.) 

38. But again: what is to be the consequence of this general individualization 
of interests? Such is, to a very great extent, the order of the actual condition of 
ownership and administration in our existing society, which is, nevertheless, re- 
plete with social evils. Indeed, hitherto those evils have been attributed, by Social 
Reformers, to the prevalent individualization of interests among men, more than 
to any other cause. Hence they have made war upon it, and proposed combined 
or amalgamated interests, or extensive partnership arrangements, as the only pos- 
sible means of securing attractive industry, and cooperation, and economy in the 
production and uses of wealth. We now assert that, in order to secure what is 



Cost the Limit of Price. 61 

more important than all else, the possibility of the free exercise of Individual Sov- 
ereignty, an indispensable condition is a still greater amount than now exists of 
Individuality, or disconnection in the property relations of men. We affirm that 
nearly all that there is good in existing society results from that element. What 
then follows? Do we abandon the high aims of other Socialists in other respects? 
Is all thought of cooperation and the economies surrendered by us? Clearly they 
are, unless some new and hitherto undiscovered element is brought in. To go back 
from the present field of effort of the Social Reformers to so much of Individual- 
ity as can exist in the present order of society, and stop at that alone, is evidently 
to return to the present social disorder, in which it is sufficiently demonstrated by 
experience that the exercise of the Sovereignty of the Individual — the point we 
aim to secure — is itself just' as impossible as the other conditions desired. But 
why is it impossible? For the reason that Individuality of interests, upon which 
that exercise rests, is itself only partially possible in a social state in which there 
is a general denial of equity in the distribution of wealth, — equity being what the 
Cost Principle alone can supply. If the woman, or the youth under age, is denied 
the means of acquiring an independent subsistence, by the fact that they receive 
less than equivalents for their industry, they are necessarily thrown into a state of 
dependence upon others. The exercise of their own Sovereignty, then, is obviously 
an impossibility for them. There are thousands of women, for example, in the 
higher ranks of society, who never felt the luxury in their lives of spending a shil- 
ling that they knew to be actually their own, and never applied to their fathers or 
husbands for money without the degrading sense of beggary. On the other hand, 
the husbands and fathers are involved, by the same false pecuniary relations, in an 
unnecessary and harassing responsibility for the conduct and expenditure of every 
member of their families, which is equally destructive of their own freedom, or 
the exercise of their own Sovereignty over themselves. It is the same in the exist- 
ing relations of the poor and the rich, the hireling and the employer, the master 
and the slave, and in nearly all the ten thousand ramified connections of men in 
existing society. By refusing equity in the distribution of wealth ; by reducing 
the earnings of women, and youths, and hired men, and slaves below equivalents; 
by thus grasping power over others, through the medium of an undue absorption 
of the products of their industry, — the members of community are brought into 
the relation of oppressors and oppressed, and both are together and alike involved 
in a common destiny of mutual restrictions, espionage, suspicions, heartburnings, 
open destructive collisions, and secret hostility, and each is thereby shorn of the 
possibility of exercising his prerogative of sovereign control over his own actions. 
39. Government of all sorts is adverse to freedom. It destroys the freedom of 
the subject, directly, by virtue of the fact that he is a subject; and destroys equally 
the freedom of the governor, indirectly, by devolving on him the necessity of over- 
looking and attempting, hopelessly, to regulate the conduct of others, — a task 



62 Tlie /Science of Society. 

never yet accomplished, and the attempt at which is sufficiently harassing to wear 
the life out of the most zealous advocate of order. With the greater development 
of the individuals to be governed the task becomes proportionally the more one- 
rous, until, in our day, the business of govern mg grows vulgar from its excessive 
laboriousness. 

40. All combinations of interest imply and involve the necessity of government, 
because nature demands and will have an individual lead. The denial of equity 
implies and involves the necessity of combinations of interest, by throwing one 
part of the community into a state of dependence upon the other, authorizing mu- 
tu al supervision and criticism, and creating mutual restriction and hostility. 

41. A man of wealth is said, among us, to be a "man in independent circum- 
stances"; but in truth the man of wealth of our day has not begun to conceive 
the genuine luxury of perfect freedom, — a freedom which, by immutable laws, 
can never be realized otherwise than by a prior performance of exact justice. 

42. The principles here asserted are universal. The same causes that are up- 
heaving the thrones of Europe are disturbing the domestic tranquillity of thousands 
of families among us. Red Republicanism in France, African Slavery in America, 
aud the mooted question of the rights of women are one and the same problem. 
It is the sole question of human liberty, or the Sovereignty of the Individual ; and 
the sole basis upon which the exercise of that Sovereignty can rest is Equity, — 
the rendering to each of that which is his. The Cost Principle furnishes the law of 
that rendering. That, and that alone, administers Equity. Hence it places all in a 
condition of independence. It dissolves the relation of protectors and protected 
by rendering protection unnecessary. It takes away the necessity resulting from 
dependence for combinations of interest and government, and hence for mutual 
responsibility for, and interference with, each other's deportment, by devolving the 
Cost, or disagreeable effects, of the conduct of each upon himself, — submitting him 
to the government of natural consequences, — the only legitimate government. In 
fine, the Cost Principle in operation renders possible, harmless, and purely bene- 
ficent the universal exercise of Individual Sovereignty. 

43. Hence it follows that the Cost Principle underlies Individuality, or the dis- 
connection of interests, in the same manner as Individuality itself underlies and 
sustains the Sovereignty of the Individual. Hence, again, the Cost Principle is the 
basis principle or foundation upon which the whole fabric of social harmony rests, 



as the Sovereignty of the Individual 
point of the same fabric, — the end 



is, as has been said, the apex, or culminating 
and purpose of a true social order. Herein, 
then, is their intimate and necessary! relation to each other. 

44. "Without Equity as a basis on which to rest, the Sovereignty of the Individual 
is true still as an abstract principle, but wholly incapable of realization. The Indi- 
vidual Sovereign is so de jure, but not de facto. He is a Sovereign without domi- 
nions, treated as a pretender, and his claims ridiculed by the actual incumbent. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 68 

The assertion of Sovereignty is a phantom and a delusion until the Sovereign 
conies to his own. The Cost Principle, as the essential element of Equity, gives to each 
his own, while nothing else can. Hence, again, the intimate and necessary relation 
between these two principles. 

45. The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual is already beginning to 
develop itself, originally in an abstract form, in various quarters, and to take a 
well-defined shape in many minds. It has been announced in substance, recently, 
by several able writers, not accompanied, however, by the indispensable scientific 
limitation, — "to be exercised at his own cost," — without which it is a principle 
of anarchy and confusion, instead of order. To preach the doctrine, even with the 
limitation, apart from its basis in equity, is disturbing. It is the announcement 
to slaves of their inherent right to be free, at the same time that you leave them 
hopeless of the realization of freedom. It is to unfit men for their present relations 
while offering them no means of inaugurating truer relations. It is "to curse 
men's stars, and give them no sun." As a preliminary work to the impending re- 
construction, the unsettling of men's minds may be a necessity, but "transitions 
are painful," and humanity demands that the interval should be shortened between 
inspiring a want and actualizing the conditions of its gratification. 

46. The essential condition of freedom is disconnection — individualization — 
disintegration of interests. The essential condition of disconnection is that that 
be given to each which belongs to each. All harmonic unity is a result or growth 
from the prior individuality of the separate monads. The old condition of society, 
of fealty and protection, and consequent mutual amalgamation or combinations of 
interests, is a species of amorphous conglomerate, of which the past progress of 
Reform has been the gradual dissolution. Reform and consequent individualiza- 
tion is the tendency of this age. The process thus commenced must go on to com- 
pletion, until every man and every woman, and, to an appropriate extent, every 
child, is a perfect Individual, with an interest, an administration, and a destiny 
solely and emphatically under his or her own control. Out of that condition of 
things, and concurrently with it, and just in proportion to its completeness, will 
grow a more intimate harmony, or, if you will, unity of sentiment, and human af- 
fections, and mutual regard, begotten purely of attraction, than can be conceived 
of in the midst of the mutual embarrassment and constraint of our day, and of our 
order of life. It is only when each individual atom of the dusky mineral is disin- 
tegrated from every other, held in complete solution, and allowed to obey, without 
let or hindrance, the law of its own interior impulse, that each shoots spontane- 
ously to its own place, and that all concur in voluntary union to constitute the 
pellucid crystal or the sparkling diamond of the mines. So in human affairs, 
what is feared by the timid conservative as the dissolution of order is, in fact, 
merely the preliminary stage of the true harmonic Constitution of Society, — the 
necessary analysis prior to its genuine and legitimate synthesis. 



64 The Science of Society. 

47. The connection of the Cost Principle with the Adaptation of the Supply to the 
Demand has been already pointed ont. The nature and necessity of an Equitable 
Money, as the instrument of working the Cost Principle, will be demonstrated, as 
previously stated, in a subsequent chapter. In this manner the interrelations of 
this circle of principles are established, not so fully as the nature of the subject 
demands, but as much so as the incidental character of the present notice will 
permit. 

48. But, although it may be admitted that we gain something of freedom in the 
action of the Individual by avoiding combinations of interest, do we not lose, by 
that means, the benefits of cooperation and the economies of the large scale? This 
question is important, and demands a satisfactory and conclusive answer. That 
answer is given in the whole treatise which follows. It is admitted that heretofore 
no other means for securing those ends have been known. It is asserted, however, 
that principles are now known by which all the higher results of social harmony 
can be achieved without that fatal feature of combination, which has promised, 
but failed, to realize them. Hence we draw a new and technical distinction be- 
tween Combination and Cooperation, and insist on that distinction with great rigor. 
We assert that the true principles of Social Science are totally averse to combina- 
tions of interest. At the same time we admit freely that any principles which 
should not secure the greatest conceivable amount of Cooperation would fail en- 
tirely of solving the problem in question. 

49. By Combinations are meant partnership interests and community of pro- 
perty or administration, such as confuse, in any degree, or obliterate the lines of 
Individuality in the ownership or use of property. 

50. By Cooperation, or cooperative relations, is meant such an arrangement of 
the property and industrial interests of the different Individuals of the community 
that each, in pursuing his own pleasure or benefit, contributes incidentally to the 
pleasure or benefit of the others. 

51. We assume the burden of proof. We admit the obligation resting upon us 
to establish the position that extreme Individuality or disconnection of interests 
is compatible — contrary to all previous opinion — with as thorough and extended 
Cooperation as can exist in any system of Combinations whatsoever. 

52. It must not be understood that disconnection of interests implies, in the 
slightest degree, an isolation of persons. A hundred or a thousand men may be 
engaged in the same shop, and still their interests be entirely individualized. 
Such is the case now under the present wages system. The laborers in a manu- 
facturing establishment, for example, have no common interest, no partnership, no 
combined responsibilities. Their interests are completely individualized, and yet 
they work together. This is all right. It is not at this point that the evil lurks 
which the Socialist seeks, or should seek, to remedy. Besides this, these men and 
women now cooperate completely in their labor. They all work at distinct func- 



Cost the Limit of Price. 65 

Lions to a common end, which is Cooperation. The evil to be remedied is neither 
in their individuality of interests nor in any want of Cooperation. It is solely in 
the want of mutuality in the results of that Cooperation, — in other words, in the 
want of Equity, — in the want of a regulating principle which would secure to each 
the full, legitimate results of his own labor. The difficulty is that the whole hun- 
dred, or the whole thousand men now labor and cooperate, not for their own bene- 
fit, but for the benefit of one, — the employer. Under the operation of the Cost 
Principle their interests will be individual as they are now; they will cooperate as 
they do now, or, rather, more perfectly, but they will cooperate for their own mu- 
tual benefit, — the employer, or chief, receiving, like all others, merely the equi- 
valent and reward of his own labor. 

53. I feel painfully that by attempting such a condensation of these matters I 
am liable to render myself wofully obscure. I will take a special occasion to show 
that "Equitable Commerce" is not the antagonist of any other of the great Re- 
forms proposed, but that it comes in as the harmonizer of the whole. If it be 
claimed by his admirers that Fourier has shown "the what" of harmonic social re- 
lations, Warren shows " the how " to realize such relations, in which last respect 
Social Reformers generally have been lamentably deficient. 

54. I will conclude by stating how the Cost Principle, in its operation, will ad- 
dress itself to the different classes of community, so that those who feel no demand 
need not be over-burdened by the supply. 

The whole community may be divided, under this system, — not according to the 
old classification of Political Economy into producers and non-producers, — but in- 
to those who receive more than equivalents for their labor and those who receive 
less than equivalents, — those who perform no productive labor and receive a living 
or more than that being included in the former class. 

Of these classes, the latter — all those who receive less than equivalents, includ- 
ing the great mass of simple operatives who have not the aid of capital — have an 
immediate and pecuniary interest in at once adopting the principle. 

The remaining class — those who receive more than equivalents — have no such 
interest, but contrariwise. Of these only such as are moved by considerations of 
benevolence or justice, or the love of order and harmony in human relations, or by 
the sense of insecurity even for the rich in the existing order of society, or by an 
appreciation of the higher gratifications of taste through the general prevalence of 
refinement, luxury, and wealth, have any demand for this new principle of com- 
merce; and so soon as those with whom such considerations are not potential have 
read enough to know how equivalents can be measured, and that they are now on 
the gaining side, they will need no further supply of this reform, and the reform 
must go on without them, as it best may. There are only distant advantages to 
offer them, and as they have the immediate advantages in their own hands, they 
must be. expected to do the best they can to retain them. The peculiarity of the 
movement is, however, that it does not proceed by their leave. 



66 The Science of Society. 



CHAPTER n. 

EQUITY AND THE LABOR NOTE. 

55. Human beings are subject to various wants. Some of these wants have to 
be supplied to sustain life at all ; others to render life comfortable and happy. If 
an individual produced, with no aid from others, all the numerous things requisite 
to supply his wants, the things which he produced — his products — would belong- 
to himself. He would have no occasion to exchange with others, and they would 
have no equitable claims upon him for any thing which was his. 

56. But such is not the case. We all want continually for our own support or 
comfort those things which are produced by others. Hence we exchange products. 
Hence comes trade, — buying and selling, — Commerce, including the hiring of the 
labor of others. Trade is, therefore, a necessity of human society, and consists of 
the exchange of the labor, or the products of the labor, of one person, for the la- 
bor, or the products of the labor, of another person. 

57. It is clear, if this exchange is not equal, if one party gives more of his own 
labor — either in the form of labor or product — than he gets of the labor of the 
other, — either in the form of labor or product, — that he is oppressed, and becomes, 
so far as this inequality goes, the slave or subject of the other. He has, just so 
far, to expend his labor, not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of another. To 
produce good or beneficent results from trade, therefore, the exchanges should be 
equal. Hence it follows that the essential element of beneficent Commerce is 
EQUITY, or that whicJi is just and equal between man and man, 

58. The fundamental inquiry, therefore, upon the answer to which, alone, a 
Science of Commerce can be erected, is the true measure of Equity, or, what is the 
same thing, the measure of price in the exchange of labor and commodities. This 
question is one of immense importance, and, strange to say, it is one which has 
never received the slightest consideration, which has never, indeed, been raised 
either by Political Economists, Legislators, or Moralists. The only question dis- 
cussed has been, what it is which now regulates price, — never what should regulate 
it. It is admitted, nevertheless, that the present system of Commerce distributes 
wealth most unjustly. Why, then, should we not ask the question, What princi- 
ple or system of Commerce would distribute it justly? Why not apply our philo- 
sophy to discovering the true system, rather than apply it to the investigation of 
the laws according to which the false system works out its deleterious results. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 67 

59. Simple Equity is this, that so much of your labor as I take and apply to my 
benefit, so much o/my labor ought I to give you to be applied to your benefit; and, con- 
sequently, if I take a product of your labor instead of the labor itself, and pay you in a 
product of my labor, the commodity which I give you ought to be one in which there is 
just as much labor as there is in the product which I receive. 

The same idea may be differently presented in this manner. It is Equity that 
every individual should sustain just as much of the common burden of life as has to be 
sustained by any body on his account. Such would be the result if each produced 
for himself all that he consumed, as in the first case supposed above ; and the fact 
that it is found convenient to exchange labor and the products of labor does not 
vary the definition of Equity in the least. 

60. To a well-regulated mind the preceding propositions present an obvious 
and self-evident truth, like the proposition that two and two make four, demand- 
ing no other proof than the statement itself. Yet simple and undeniable as they 
appear, when thus distinctly propounded, the consequences which inevitably fol- 
low from the principle which they affirm are ultra-radical and revolutionary of all 
our existing commercial relations, as will be shown in the subsequent chapters of 
this work. They contain merely, however, a statement of the Principle of Equity. 
They leave the question of the Method of making an application of the principle 
still open. They do not furnish the means of arriving at the measure of Equity. 
This, then, is the next step in the investigation. 

61. If I exchange my labor against yours, the first measure that suggests itself 
for the relative amount of labor performed by each is the length of time that each 
is employed. If all pursuits were equally laborious, or, in other words, if all labor 
were equally repugnant or toilsome, — if it cost equal amounts of human suffering 
or endurance for each hour of time employed in every different pursuit, then it 
would be exact Equity to exchange one hour of labor for one other hour of labor, 
or a product which has in it one hour of labor for another product which has in it 
one hour of labor the world over. Such, however, is not the case. Some kinds of 
labor are exceedingly repugnant, while others are less so, and others still more 
pleasing and attractive. There are differences of this sort which are agreed upon 
by all the world. For example, sweeping the filth from the streets, or standing in 
the cold water and dredging the bottom of a stream, would be, by general consent, 
regarded as more repugnant, or, in the common language on the subject, harder 
work, than laying out a garden, or measuring goods. 

But besides this general difference in the hardness or repugnance of work, there 
are individual differences in the feeling toward different kinds of labor which 
make the repugnance or attraction of one person for a particular kind of labor quite 
different from that of another. Labor is repugnant or otherwise, therefore, more 
or less, according to the individualities of persons. 

If you inquire among a dozen men what each would prefer to do, you will find 



68 The Science of Society. 

the greatest diversity of choice, and you will be surprised to find some choosing 
such occupations as are the least attractive to you. It is the same among women 
as respects the labors which they pursue. 

62. It follows from these facts that Equity in the exchange of labor, or the pro- 
ducts of labor, cannot be arrived at by measuring the labor of different persons by 
the hour merely. Equity is the equality of burdens according to the requirements 
of each person, or, in other words, the assumption of as much burden by each per- 
son as has to be assumed by somebody, on his account, so that no one shall be 
living by imposing burdens on others. Time is one element in the measurement 
of the burdens of labor, but the different degrees of repugnance in the different 
kinds of labor prevent it from being the only one. Hence it follows that there 
must be some means of measuring this repugnance itself, — in other words, of deter- 
mining the relative hardness of different kinds of work, — before we can arrive at 
an equitable system of exchanging labor and the products of labor. If we could 
measure the general average of repugnance, — that is, if we could determine how 
people generally regard the different kinds of labor as to their agreeableness or dis- 
agreeableness, — still that would not insure Equity in the exchange between indi- 
viduals, on account of those individualities of character and taste which have been 
adverted to. It is an equality of burden between the two individuals who ex- 
change which must be arrived at, and that must be according to the estimate which 
each honestly forms of the repugnance to him or her of the particular labor which 
he or she performs, and which, or the products of which, are to be exchanged. 

63. It is important for reasons of practical utility to arrive at a general or 
average estimate of the relative repugnance of different kinds of labor, especially 
of the most common kinds, and that is done under the operation of the Cost Prin- 
ciple, as hereafter pointed out (195) ; but, as we have seen, if we had already 
arrived at it, it would not be a sufficiently accurate measure of Equity to be applied 
between individuals ; while, on the other hand, this average itself can only be based 
upon individual estimates. The average which now exists in the public mind, by 
which it is understood that field labor, in cultivating grain, for example, is neither 
the hardest nor the easiest kind of work, and that sewing or knitting is not so re- 
pugnant as washing or scrubbing, rests upon the general observation of individual 
preferences. 

64. It follows, therefore, in order to arrive at a satisfactory measure of Equitj r , 
and the adoption of a scientific system of commerce: 1. That some method must 
be devised for comparing the relative repugnance of different kinds of labor. 2. 
That, in making the comparison, each individual must make his or her own esti- 
mate of the repugnance to him or her of the labor which he or she performs, and 
3. That there should be a sufficient motive in the results or consequences to in- 
sure an honest exercise of the judgment, and an honest expression of the real feel- 
ings of each, in making the comparison. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 69 

05. I. — That some method should be devised for comparing the relative repugnance 
of different kinds of labor. This is extremely simple. All that is necessary is to 
agree upon some particular kind of labor, the average repugnance of which is 
most easily ascertained, or the most nearly fixed, and use it as a standard of com- 
parison, a sort of yard-stick for measuring the relative repugnance of other kinds of 
labor. For example, in the Western American States it is found that the most 
appropriate kind of labor to be assumed as a standard with which to compare all 
other kinds of labor is corn-raising. It is also found, upon extensive investigation, 
that the average product of that kind of labor, in that region, is twenty pounds of 
corn to the hour. If, then, blacksmithing is reckoned as one half harder work than 
corn-raising, it will be rated (by the blacksmith himself) at thirty pounds of corn to 
the hour. If shoemaking be reckoned as one quarter less onerous than corn-raising, 
it will be rated at fifteen pounds of com to the hour. In this manner the idea of 
corn-raising is used to measure the relative repugnance of all kinds of labor. 

06. II. — That, in making the comparison, each individual must make his or her own 
estimate of the repugnance to him or her of the particular labor which he or she performs. 
This condition must be secured, both for the reasons already stated, and because 
another equally important principle in the true science of society is the Sovereignly 
of the Individual. The Individual must be kept absolutely above all institutions. 
He must be left free even to abandon the principles whenever he chooses. The 
only constraint must be in the attractive nature and results of true principles. 

67. III. — That there should be a sufficient motive in the results or consequences of 
compliance with these principles to insure an honest exercise of the judgment, and an 
honest expression of the real feeling of each in making his estimate of the relative re- 
pugnance of his labor. The existence of such a motive can only be shown by a 
view of the general results of this entire system of principles upon the condition 
of society, and upon the particular interests of the individual. These results must 
be gathered from a thorough study of the whole subject, in order to establish this 
point conclusively to the philosophic mind. The force of a public sentiment recti- 
fied by the knowledge of true principles will not be lost sight of by such a mind. 
(2'29.) The particular remedial results of deviations from the principle of Equity 
upon the interests of the individual will be specifically pointed out in the sub- 
sequent pages. (72-76.) 

68. If an exchange could be always made and completed on the spot, each party 
giving and receiving an equivalent, — that is, an amount of labor, or a product of 
labor, which had in it an amount of repugnance or cost just equal to that in the 
labor or product for which it was given or received, — the whole problem of ex- 
changes would be solved by the simple method just stated. There would in that 
case be no necessity for a circulating medium, or for any thing to perform the part 
which is performed by money in our existing commerce. But such is not the case. 
Articles are not always at hand which have in them the same amount of cost; in- 



70 The Science of Society. 

deed, it is the rare exception that exact equivalents can be made upon the spot in 
commodities which are mutually wanted. Besides, it may frequently happen that 
I want something from you, either labor or the products of labor, when you, at the 
time, want nothing of me. In such a case the exchange is only partially completed I 
on the spot, the remaining part waiting to be completed at some future time, by the 
performance of an equivalent amount of labor, or the delivery of products or com- 
modities having in them an equivalent amount of labor. 

69. In such a case as that just stated, it is proper that the party who does not 
make his part of the exchange on the spot should give an evidence of his obligation 
to do so at some future time, whenever called upon, — and this is the origin of what 
is called the Labor Note, which is the form assumed by "Equitable Money," the 
fourth among the elements of the solution of the Problem of Society. The party 
who remains indebted to the other gives his own note, provided the other consents to 
receive it, for an equivalent amount of his own labor, or else of the standard com- 
modity, — say so many pounds of corn, specifying in the note the kind of labor, 
and the alternative. As it may happen that the party receiving the Labor Note 
may not require the labor itself, or that it may be inconvenient for the party pro- 
mising to perform it when it is wanted, it is provided that the obligation may be 
discharged, at the option of the party giving the note, in the standard commodity 
instead. On the other hand, although the party receiving the note may not want 
the labor himself, yet some person with whom he deals may want it, and hence he 
can pass the note to a third party who is willing to receive it for an equivalent 
amount of labor, or products, received from him. In this manner the Labor Note 
begins to circulate from one to another, and the aggregate of Labor Notes in cir- 
culation in a neighborhood constitutes the neighborhood circulating medium, 
dispensing, so far as this Equitable Commerce extends, with money altogether, 
or, rather, introducing a new species of paper-money, based solely upon individual 
responsibility. 

70. The use of the Labor Note is not, as has been already observed, strictly a 
principle of Equity, and partakes more of the nature of a contrivance than any other 
feature of the system of Equitable Commerce ; but yet it seems to be a necessary 
instrument to be employed in the practical working of the system. The Theory of 
Equity is complete without it, but the necessity for its use arises from the practical 
fact that exchanges cannot in every case be completed on the spot. Hence a cir- 
culating medium of some sort is indispensable, and in order that the system may 
remain throughout an equitable one, in practice as well as in theory, the circulat- 
ing medium must be based on equivalents of labor or cost between individuals. 

The features of the Labor Note are peculiar, and the points of difference between 
it and ordinary money are numerous and far more important than at first appears. 
They are as follows : 

71. I. — Its cheapness and abundance. As it costs nothing but the paper upon 



Cost the Limit of Price. 71 

which it is written, printed, or engraved, and the labor of executing and signing 
it, it may be said, for practical purposes, to cost nothing. The great fault of our 
existing currency is its expensiveness and scarcity. It is upon these properties 
that the whole system of interest or rent on money is founded, a tribute to which 
the rich as well as the poor have to submit, whenever they want a portion of the 
circulating medium to use. To show that this is a real and frightful evil in gold 
and silver currency, and consequently in all money of which gold and silver are the 
basis, demands a distinct treatise on money. Under the Labor Note system, every 
man who has in his possession his ability to work, or his character, or in these ele- 
ments variously combined, the assurance of responsibility or the basis of credit, 
has always by him as much money as he needs. He has only to take his pen from 
his pocket and make it at will. There can be no such cases as happen now, of re- 
sponsible men worth their tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in property, but 
absolutely destitute of money, and forced to submit to the shaving process of bank- 
ers, brokers, and Jews. 

72. II. — Being based on individual credit, it makes every man his own banker. This 
feature of the Labor Note system is substantially contained in the preceding state- 
ment, but the more important consequences of this fact remain to be pointed out. 
Bankers are proverbial for their anxiety to maintain their credit unimpaired and 
unsuspected. With them distrust is synonymous with the ruin of their business. 
Under this system every man, woman, boy, and girl, assuming the character of a 
banker, becomes equally solicitous about the maintenance of his or her credit. 
Upon the goodness of their reputation for punctuality of redemption depends the 
fact of their always having change in their pockets. Honesty comes then to a 
good market, and finds at once a pecuniary reward. If one's credit is suffered to 
fall into disrepute among his neighbors, he is left positively without money or the 
means of obtaining it, and reduced to the necessity of making all his exchanges on 
the spot. He is put pecuniarily into Coventry. Both the superior advantages of 
possessing credit, and the greater inconvenience of losing it, conspire, therefore, to 
install the reign of commercial honor and common honesty in the most minute and 
ordinary transactions of life among the whole people. The moralist who is wise 
will perceive herein an engine of reform immensely important to subserve his ends. 
This result is already satisfactorily proven in practice at one point, where this sys- 
tem of exchanges has been introduced, in the fact that every person is anxious to 
obtain the Labor Notes of others for use and to abstain, so far as he can, from is- 
suing his own ; as well as in the general solicitude for the preservation of credit, 
aud the general promptitude in redeeming the notes that are issued. Notwith- 
standing the fact that, in so small a circle, it is only a part of the pecuniary trans- 
actions of the community which can be carried on upon the Cost Principle, 
— ordinary money having to be used in all transactions with the world outside, and even 
within the community, for those things which were purchased outside and which cost 
money, — still these results have been strikingly exhibited in practice. 



72 The Science of Society. 

7o. III. — It combines the properties of a circulating medium and a means of credit. 
These qualities have been substantially stated above as separate attributes of the 
Labor Note system; but the advantage of their combination in one and the same 
instrumentality of Commerce is worthy of a distinct observation. At the end of 
the third year from the commencement of the settlement above referred to, there 
were eighteen families having two lots of ground, each with houses — nine brick 
and nine wooden ones — and gardens of their own, nearly the whole of which cap- 
ital was created by them during that period. The families, without exception, 
came there quite destitute of worldly accumulations. Thirty dollars in money 
was probably the largest sum possessed by any of them. Others landed there with 
five dollars and ten as the whole of their fortune. They were nearly all families 
who had been exhausted in means as well as broken down and discouraged in spi- 
rit by successive failures of community, or association attempts at reform. The 
success they have thus achieved, in so short a time, has resulted entirely from their 
own labor, exchanged so far as requisite and practicable upon the Cost or Equit- 
able Principle, facilitated by the instrumentality of the Labor Note. 

74. A family arriving without means at the location of a village operating on 
the Equitable Principle, if their appearance or known character inspires sufficient 
confidence in the minds of the previous settlers, can immediately commence opera- 
tions, not upon charity, but upon their own credit, issuing their Labor Notes — 
men, women, and youths — so far as their several kinds of labor are in demand, 
procuring thereby the labor of the whole village in all the various trades necessary 
to construct them an edifice, and supply them with the necessaries of life, so far as 
the size of the circle renders it possible to produce them on the spot. Labor, even prospec- 
tive labor, thus becomes immediate capital. Interest and profits being discarded, 
the amount of capital thus existing in labor is greatly augmented. The fact that 
the labor of the women and children is equally remunerated with that of the men 
again adds to the amount of combined capital in the family. By the operation of 
these several causes, a family which has been struggling for years, in the midst of 
the competition of ordinary Commerce and the oppressions of capital, with no suc- 
cess beyond barely holding on to life, may become in a short time independent and 
well provided. Such are the legitimate workings of the true system of Commerce, 
and so far as it has been tested by practical operations the results have entirely 
corroborated the theory. 

75. [The settlers at Trialville, however, would not wish any thing said upon 
this subject to be construed into any pledge on their part to supply any advantages 
to individuals coming among them. There is no community or society there in the 
corporate sense of the term. Every Individual judges for himself upon what terms 
he will treat with others, how far he will receive their Labor Notes, or whether he 
will receive them at all. Persons going there must make up their own opinion 
whether there is a sufficient demand for the kinds of labor which they can perform, 



Cost the Limit of Price. 73 

whether their own uprightness of character and punctuality in the discharge of 
obligations are such as to inspire and maintain confidence, and, indeed, upon every 
point relating to the subject. No guarantees whatever are given, except such as 
the Individual finds in the principles themselves, while it is left entirely to the de- 
cision of the Individual himself, on every occasion, whether even he will act on the 
principles or not. There is no compact or constitution, — no laws, by-laws, rules, or 
regulations of any sort. The Individual is kept above all institutions, out of deference 
to the principle of Individuality and the Sovereignty of the Individual, which belong just 
as much to the fundamental basis of true society as the Cost Principle itself. There 
must, therefore, be no reliance on express or implied pledges, nor upon any species 
of cooperation which is contracted for, and binding by agreement. Besides, the extent 
to which the advantages of the Labor Note can be rendered available is lhnited in 
the beginning by the smallness of the circle, by the prevalence of pursuits unfavor- 
able to the mutual exchange of labor or products, and by numerous other considera- 
tions, all of which must be judged of by the Individual upon his own responsibility, 
and at his own risk.] 

76. When credit is raised upon the issue of Labor Notes, it has the advantage 
of being based upon that which the party has it in his power to give. He has in 
his own vaults the means of redemption. If a laboring man promises money, his 
ability to pay the money depends upon the precarious chance of his finding a de- 
mand for his labor. If he gives a Labor Note, which is to be redeemed in labor, 
he secures the means of paying by the act of entering into the obligation. Even 
if the payment is demanded in the alternative, and is discharged in the standard 
commodity itself (corn), or, what is more likely, in other commodities, measured by 
corn, or in the Labor Notes of the others, still all of these are procured by the ex- 
change of his own labor, and it will appear, upon a full exposition of the system, 
that under the operation of these principles labor will always be in demand, so that 
no laborer need ever be out of employment. (161.) As a result of this fact every 
man can know positively, beforehand, to precisely what extent he can, with safety, 
issue his Labor Notes, the contingencies of sickness and death alone excepted. 
Hence dishonesty finds no subterfuges. In the case of death the heirs possess the 
property, if there be property, for which the notes were given. To refuse to re- 
deem them is a palpable ascertained fraud, and the same powerful motives which 
have been shown as operating on the original debtor to insure honesty and punc- 
tuality operate also upon them. If they evade the obligation, they, too, are placed 
in Coventry, and cut off from all the advantages and privileges which such an as- 
sociation affords. The influence thus brought to bear upon them is ten-fold more 
potent than laws, and the sanctions of laws, in existing society. In the event of 
sickness, if the invalid has accumulated property, it serves to maintain him, and 
redeem his outstanding obligations, precisely as now. Such is the main purpose 
of accumulation. If a person has no property at the time his Labor Notes are 



74 The Science of Society. 

given, then his credit is based solely on his future labor, and the liability to sick- 
ness and death enters into the transaction and limits the issue. The risk is in- 
curred by the party who receives them. As the amount of these notes in the hands 
of any single individual is generally small, the risk is a mere trifle, and has never 
been found, practically, to be enough to make it worth while to take it into ac- 
count at all. For the contingency of the loss of property by fire or other accidents, 
between the time when obligations are incurred and their redemption, as well as 
at all other times, insurance can be resorted to, as is done in existing society. 
Thus the Labor Note, while it is a circulating medium, is at the same time the in- 
strument of a system of credit, having all the advantages, with none of the fright- 
ful results of insecurity and bankruptcy, which grow out of, or accompany, the 
credit system actually prevailing in the commercial world. 

77. IV. — The Labor Note represents an ascertained and definite amount of labor 
or property, which ordinary money does not. We have examples of this feature of 
currency in the railroad and opera ticket, and other similar representations of a 
positive thing. A railroad ticket represents a ride of a definite length today, to- 
morrow, and next day, but a dollar does not represent any thing definite. It will 
buy one amount of sugar or flour today, another amount tomorrow, and still a dif- 
ferent amount the next day. The importance of this feature of the two different 
systems is immense. It can, however, only be exhibited in its consequence by an 
extended treatise on the subject. What is shown in this chapter is a mere glimpse 
at the system of " Equitable Commerce " in operation. A thousand objections will 
occur which it is impossible to remove at the time of stating the general outline. 
It will be perceived by the acute intellect that a principle is here broached which 
is absolutely revolutionary of all existing commerce. Perhaps a few minds may 
follow it out at once into its consequences far enough to perceive that it promises 
the most magnificent results in the equal distribution of wealth proportioned to 
industry, the abolition of pauperism, general security of condition instead of con- 
tinual bankruptcy or poverty, universal cooperation, the general prevalence of com- 
mercial honor and honesty, and in ten thousand harmonizing and beneficent effects, 
morally and religiously. The larger class of persons, however, will require that 
each particular detail shall be traced out and defined, and the mass of mankind 
will only understand the subject upon the basis of practical illustration. Hence 
the necessity that the practice go along with the theory, a method which has been 
generally adopted and pursued, and of the results of which the public will be from 
time to time sufficiently advised. 

It would be inappropriate at this early point, and before a better understanding 
of the results which flow from the fountain of Equity has been obtained, to trace 
the operation of the Labor Note more into detail. In a subsequent chapter it will 
be considered in the light of a universal or world-wide system of currency. (245.) 



Cost the Limit of Price. 75 



CHAPTER m. 

COST, PRICE, LABOR, NATURAL WEALTH. 

78. The position was established in the preceding chapter that Equity in any 
exchange of labor or commodities — the products of labor — consists of the exact 
equality of burdens assumed by the parties to the transaction. The amount of bur- 
den involved in rendering a given amount of labor, or a given commodity, is technically 
denominated the "Cost" of that labor or commodity, and the labor or commodity which 
is received in return for that which is rendered is denominated the " Price " of it. 
Hence, inasmuch as it is simple Equity that these two should be the equivalents of 
each other, or exactly equal in the amount of burden imposed, the scientific/ormw/a 
is that "Cost is the Limit (or scientific measure) of Price." 

79. Cost is, then, the amount of repugnance overcome. Hence, according to this 
principle, the equitable price of any labor or commodity is measured by the amount 
of human repugnance or endurance which it has cost to perform the labor or pro- 
duce the commodity. This, again, is the same thing as labor for labor, burden for 
burden, or equality of burdens in exchange. Hence it implies that there is no other 
basis of price, no other ground for a demand for remuneration costing human en- 
durance, than the fact of human endurance itself. 

SO. This proposition, — Cost the Limit of Price, — so simple, so seemingly un- 
important to the casual reader, and yet so obviously true when properly appre- 
hended, so perfectly consonant with the natural sentiment of right in every mind, 
will appear by its results as previously stated to be one of the most radical propo- 
sitions ever made. A rigid adhesion to it in commercial relations will revolutionize 
nearly every species of transaction among men. It will do so beneficently, how- 
ever, for all classes, so that no alarm need be felt by any. We shall begin, in this 
chapter, to trace out some of these results, through the various operations of the 
principle upon the interests of society, and to contrast them with the effects of 
those principles which are now efficient in the same sphere. 

81. The first grand consequence resulting from the simple principle of Equity 
— Cost the Limit of Price — is, as already intimated, that whatever we possess which 
has cost no human labor, which has imposed NO burden in its production, which has 
COST nothing, although it is susceptible of being property, is, nevertheless, not a rightful 
subject of price. All property of this kind, whether it is equally open to the en- 
joyment of all mankind, — the property of the race, like air and water, — or whether 
it attaches more particularly to some Individual, like genius or skill, is denominated 



76 The Science of Society. 

Natural Wealth. The formula relating to this subject is, theu, that Natural 
Wealth bears no Price, — that is, that it cannot, of itself, be made the subject 
of price upon any equitable grounds whatsoever, — although the resignation of so 
much of it as is required for one's own convenience may be the basis of price on 
the ground of a sacrifice endured, as will be explained in speaking of the compre- 
hensiveness of the term Cost. (114.) Every thing valuable which is bestowed by 
nature without any provision on the part of mankind or the Individual is Natural 
Wealth, such as fire and water, light and heat, the earth, the air, the principles of sci- 
ence and mechanism, personal beauty, health, natural genius, talent, etc. 

82. The principle stated in the preceding Number settles, scientifically and 
beautifully, the vexed question of the ownership of the soil. Land, in its natural 
state, is natural wealth, equally belonging to all the inhabitants of the earth. It 
stands upon the same footing as the ocean and the atmosphere. But so soon as 
labor is bestowed upon any portion of it, which adds to i<t a positive value, the la- 
bor so bestowed is the rightful subject of price, to be measured like every other 
species of labor, by the cost or burden assumed in performing it. Thus the equit- 
able price for lands upon which no labor has been performed is zero ; the equitable 
price for wild lands which have merely been surveyed and bounded is the cost of 
surveying and bounding them; if they have been cleared and fenced, then the 
equitable price is the cost of clearing and fencing in addition to that of surveying 
and bounding; and if, still further, they have been ploughed, cultivated, and im- 
proved, then the equitable price is the cost of as much labor as, rightly applied, 
would take the same lands in the natural state and bring them into the state of 
improvement in which they are found. The reason of this latter modification is 
this, — that lands may have been in cultivation for hundreds of years, and labor 
have been bestowed upon them each year, while the cost of such labor has been 
annually repaid by the successive crops, except so much of the same as remains on 
the land in the form of permanent artificial improvement. The cost which has 
been already repaid ought not to be paid again, while that which remains invested, 
and is to be repaid out of the future crops, or other use, may be equitably demanded 
from the purchaser who is to receive such future benefit. If the lands have been 
so badly cultivated as to have deteriorated instead of improved, it would be equit- 
able that the seller should pay to the purchaser a sum equal to the cost of bring- 
ing them up to their natural state. Such cultivation is robbing the land, and 
incurring a debt to humanity, as if one were to find some means of tainting or ex- 
hausting the atmosphere, or fouling a stream from which others must draw their 
supplies. 

83. It is the same with the other natural elements. Water as it flows past in 
the stream is natural wealth, and not the subject of price. The man who should 
seize upon a stream of water and fence it up or turn it aside, for the purpose of 
levying a tribute upon those who lived below him upon the same stream, in the 



Cost the Limit of Price. 77 

form of a price for their necessary supplies, would commit an obvious breach of 
natural law. But although water, in its natural condition, is not equitably suscep- 
tible of price, yet so soon as human labor is bestowed upon it by any person for 
the benefit of another, a price may be rightfully affixed to the water, to be precisely 
measured by the cost or burden of the labor so bestowed. Every individual has a 
right to appropriate so much of the common natural wealth as is requisite to the 
supply of his wants. So soon as I have dipped up a pitcher full of water from the 
spring or stream, it is no longer mere natural wealth ; it is a product of my labor as 
well. It is thus my individual property. No one has a right to take it from me 
without my consent, and in case I do consent, I have an equitable and just right 
to demand a pi"ice equal to the burden I have assumed, which consists of the labor, 
the risk, or whatever else made it a burden. If I have merely dipped it up, the 
equitable price is a trifle probably not worth considering; but if I have carried it 
two miles over a burning plain, it may be considerable; and if I have run the risk 
of carrying it for the sake of another through the brisk fire from an enemy's bat- 
tery, the risk will enter equitably into the estimate of the price. (121.) In all 
these cases it is not really the natural wealth itself, the land or the water, which 
acquires a price, but the human labor and other elements which are bestowed upon 
it. Nothing is properly the rightful subject of price Out repugnance overcome. But as 
the portions of natural wealth to which human labor has thus been added are the 
objects which are wanted by the purchaser, and which are delivered to him when 
the price is paid, it is natural to speak of them as bearing the price. 

84. It is obvious from this application of the principle of cost, which we have 
seen is nothing but the scientific measure of equity, that simple equity cuts up by 
the roots every species of speculation in lands. It will be seen, in the next place, 
that it cuts up equally another species of speculation, which the world hardly sus- 
pects of being, although it is, both in principle and in its oppressive results, equally 
iniquitous, — that is, speculation in talent, natural skill, or genius. The definitions 
and principles above stated render it obvious that no man has any just or equitable 
right to charge a price for that which it cost nothing of human labor to create. 
"Freely ye have received, freely give." 

85. A superior natural tact for the performance of any function or labor ren- 
ders it easier instead of harder to perform the function or labor. It makes the 
burden ordinarily lighter instead of heavier, and consequently, upon the Cost 
Principle, reduces instead of augmenting the price. I say, "ordinarily," because the 
case may happen of a person having a high degree of natural ability for a particu- 
lar kind of industry, and having at the same time, from some special cause, an 
unusual repugnance to its performance, and it must be constantly remembered that 
it is the degree of personal repugnance overcome which measures the price. As 
the rule, however, the taste or attraction for a given pursuit accompanies and cor- 
responds to the degree of excellence in it, and in that case the remarkable result 
above stated flows from the principle. 



78 The Science of Society. 

86. Naturally enough, a conclusion so strikingly dissimilar to all that is now 
seen in practice or entertained in idea will be received at first blush with some 
suspicions of its soundness. It will be found, however, upon examination, that 
the consequences of admitting it ,are all beneficent and harmonious. They are, in 
fact, indispensable to the solution of the problem of true social relations. 

87. Talent, natural skill, or genius, distinguished from such ability as is the result 
of labor or acquisition, is one species of natural wealth. It is not, like earth, air, and 
water, equally distributed by nature to all men, and cannot, therefore, be equally 
enjoyed by all. Those on whom it has been conferred in a high degree have a 
kind of enjoyment of it in the fact of its possession, which cannot be participated 
with others. It is the same with health or personal beauty, or a naturally graceful 
deportment. In this particular way, although it is natural wealth, it is individual 
wealth also. There are other ways, however, in which it is not individual or ex- 
clusive, but in which it may be partaken of by all around, as when we experience 
the pleasure of looking upon a beautiful countenance or a graceful figure, or when 
we enjoy the creations of another's genius, or the productions of another's natural 
endowments. This kind of enjoyment is bestowed by nature gratuitously, and is 
not confined to the individual who produces it. It is the common patrimony of 
mankind as much as air, earth, and water. 

88. It follows from these considerations that neither the forensic talents be- 
stowed by nature upon a Daniel Webster, nor the musical endowments of a Jenny 
Lind, nor the natural agility of the mountebank, constitute any legitimate or 
equitable basis of price, for the simple reason that they have cost their possessors 
nothing, and it has already been settled that cost is the only legitimate ground 
of price. 

89. Observe, in the first place, that I do not say that the labor which it may 
require on their part to exercise these natural talents is not a legitimate basis ot 
price. On the contrary, I affirm that it is so, and that such labor is the only basis 
of price in the performance, and hence that the price of the performance is equita- 
bly limited by the precise amount of the labor in it, estimated according to its re- 
pugnance to the individual, relatively to other kinds of labor, — not augmented one 
iota on account of the extraordinary natural abilities which the performance demands. 
There is in that element no labor, no repugnance overcome, no cost, and consequently 
no basis of price. 

90. Observe, in the next place, that labor expended prior to the performance, 
in cultivating the natural talent and fitting it for the performance, is an element 
of cost, a due proportion of which may be equitably charged upon each specific 
exhibition of the talent. This point will be more fully considered presently in 
treating of the constituents of cost. (121.) 

91. It will be objected that under this system talent and skill receive no pro- 
tection. Talent and skill are intellectual strength, and it is not strength but 



Cost the Limit of Price. 79 

weakness which demands protection. Talent and skill now enable their posses- 
sors to subject the world as effectually, through its industrial relations, as prowess 
and physical manhood formerly enabled their possessors to do so upon the battle- 
fields of past history. The dominion of physical conquest is now partially becom- 
ing extinct. We are in the midst of the reign of intellectual superiority, which is 
far more subtle and intricate in the modes of its tyrannical action. The discovery 
of the true laws of social order will not be, therefore, the discovery of increased 
facilities for talent or intellectual power to exert itself for its own immediate and 
selfish aggrandizement, but the precise contrary. 

92. At the same time talent and skill will always command, like physical man- 
hood, a certain degree of homage, aud secure, indirectly, more refined and yet 
more substantial rewards than direct appropriation would confer. In discussing 
the subject of price we are by no means discussing all the possible effects of per- 
formance, but only that one which forms the basis of a demand for a direct equi- 
valent or compensation. 

93. Price is that which a parti/ may properly demand as his right, in considera- 
tion of services rendered. It relates, therefore, to exact justice between the parties, 
and justice has in it no touch of mercy, or gratitude, or benevolence, — no tribute 
of admiration, no homage. It does not exclude the exercise of those sentiments 
after its own demands are satisfied, but, for itself, it knows nothing of that sort. 
Justice demands Equity, exact Equivalents, Burden for Burden ; and will be satis- 
fied with nothing else. To understand the appropriate sphere of these various 
affections we must individualize their functions. It is essential not only to the 
security of rights, but equally in order that benevolence or homage ha felt and ac- 
cepted as such, that the limits of each should be exactly defined. The rendition 
of justice is the basis, or platform, or prior condition, upon which benevolence 
must rest. The slave feels little or no gratitude toward his master for any act of 
kindness which the master may do, because he is conscious that the master is liv- 
ing in an unjust relation toward him, and that he owes him as matter of justice 
more than he grants as an indulgence. This apparent destitution of the senti- 
ment of gratitude reacts upon the master, and he despises and depreciates the 
moral constitution of the slave. The fault is in the absence of the prior condition 
of Justice, which alone authorizes benevolence, which then inspires gratitude, and 
all conspire to institute and maintain friendly and harmonious relations. A char- 
ity bestowed while justice is withheld is always an insult. 

94. Again, according to a law of the human mind, injustice persisted in begets 
aversion or hatred on the part of the perpetrator as well, toward the object of it. 
But justice cannot be rendered while one is ignorant of what justice is ; and since 
no one who does not know that Cost is the Limit of Price knows what the limits 
of justice are, it follows that every one has been living in relations of injustice 
toward all around him. A partial consciousness of this truth tends still farther to 



80 The Science of Society. 

inspire ill-will on the part of the governors toward the governed, of the employers 
toward the employed, and of masters toward slaves. Hence, it will be perceived 
that a denial of justice operates through two channels to prevent the natural flow 
of benevolence, by hindering its bestowment, at the same time that it enfeebles or 
destroys the appreciation of it by the recipient. 

95. Still again, from ignorance of the landmarks of justice or Equity, acts are 
continually done under the supposition that justice demands them, and with no 
sentiment of benevolence, which should fall within the province of benevolence, 
while the same ignorance on the other hand hinders their acknowledgment as be- 
nevolent acts, and prevents, consequently, the appropriate sentiment of gratitude 
or reciprocal benevolence, which should be the result. 

96. The magnificent testimonial bestowed by the English people upon Rowland 
Hill for his conception of the idea of cheap postage and his exertions in behalf of 
the reform had in it nothing discordant with true principles, because it was be- 
stowed as a gratuitous homage and accepted as such. Whenever all obstructions 
to the natural exuberance of benevolence toward those who confer benefits upon 
us are removed by the establishment of equitable relations, such voluntary tributes 
repeated on all hands wirl furnish a richer inheritance for genius than the beggarly 
and precarious subsistence which now enures from pensions and patent-laws. The 
testimonial to Rowland Hill was not the price of his services, any more than a 
bridal present is the price of affection. Had he opened an account of debtor and 
creditor with the nation, and charged them a hundred thousand pounds as the 
price of his services, gratitude would have been extinguished by the preposterous 
pretension, and benevolence have been converted into aversion and disgust. The 
people, ignorant of the law of equivalents as a principle, would have felt it as an 
instinct, and have been repelled unwittingly by the breach of it. To make the 
higher class of services a matter of price at all somewhat depreciates their esti- 
mate. The artist and the inventor is apt to feel something akin to degradation, 
when forced to prefer a pecuniary demand in return for the fruits of his genius. 
Every genuine artist has an instinct for being an amateur performer solely. There 
is an intimation in this fact that in the true social order the rewards of genius will 
either cease to be pecuniary altogether, or, if not, that they will be wholly aban- 
doned to the voluntary largesse of mankind. (174.) 

97. The Cost Principle deals wholly with price, — that is, with that to which 
the party rendering the service should limit his demand, if fixed by himself, not to what 
it is proper, or becoming, or natural that others should bestow as a gratuity, which 
latter is a matter solely for their consideration. This last is not his affair. 

98. It is in this rigid sense that it is affirmed that Jenny Lind has no equitable 
right to charge more for an hour expended in singing than any other person should 
receive for an hour of labor equally repugnant, and which has involved equal con- 
tingencies of prior labor and the like. Even that price is then divisible among all 



Cost the Limit of Price. 81 

who hear her. The refining results of this operation of the principle in diffusing 
the benefits of superior endowments in every sphere among the whole people will 
be traced out into infinite ramifications by the reader for himself. 

99. The objection that men of genius, inventors, and those who exercise callings 
which are purely attractive, are not provided by this principle with the means of 
obtaining a livelihood will be answered under another head. (174.) 

100. There is another subtle and plausible objection which may be urged to 
this position, in relation to natural genius, talent, or skill, and which demands no 
little rigor of attention to detect its fallacy. It may be said that Nature deals 
with man liberally, in proportion to his endowments ; that is, that she crowns with 
greater exuberance of results the exertions of the strong man and the wise man 
than she does those of the weak and the simple-minded, and hence that there can 
be no essential injustice in doing precisely what Nature herself does, — that is, in 
maintaining so much inequality as results from giving to each an equivalent in the 
products of others to the products of his own powers. If, on the contrary, a man 
who can produce more largely and better, from superior ability, exchanges with 
one who produces less abundant and inferior commodities, solely according to the 
intrinsic hardship or cost of the labor to each, — no reference whatever being had to 
the amount or quality of the products, — it is clear that the man of the highest capacity 
loses the advantage in the transaction which Nature has conferred upon him, and 
which seems, therefore, to be justified by the ordinances of Nature. It is clear 
that, if he gets in the exchange only so much of the products of the other as would 
have been the result of his own superior ability applied in that direction, he only gets 
what Nature would have given him if he had dealt directly with her. Why, then, 
is it not right that he should have as much advantage in the bargain as he has in 
the direct production? 

101. The objection is here strongly put in order that it may be completely dis- 
posed of. It is answered as follows : 

It is the destiny of man to rise into higher relations than those which he holds 
with Nature. When man deals with Nature, he is dealing with an abject servant 
or slave. There is no equality nor reciprocity between the parties. Man is a Sove- 
reign and Nature his minister. He extorts from her rightfully whatever she can 
be made to yield. The legitimate business of man is the conquest and subjugation 
of Nature, and the law of superior force is the legitimate law of conquest and sub- 
jugation. But so soon as man comes into relations with his fellow-man the dispro- 
portion ceases. He is then dealing with his peers. The legitimate object of the 
intercourse is no longer the same. It is not now conquest and subjugation, but 
equipoise and the freedom of all. A higher relationship intervenes, and the bal- 
ance of concurrent Sovereignties can only be established and maintained by ac- 
knowledging the law of that relationship. For the strong man, physically or 
intellectually, to avail himself, to his private advantage, of his superior strength, 



82 The Science of Society. 

as the method of his intercourse with his fellow-rnen, is finally to accumulate all 
power in the hands of the few, and in the mean time to inaugurate the reign of 
discord, collision, and war. 

102. This subtile but most important distinction is already practically acknow- 
ledged in a large circle of human affairs. The world is already sufficiently 
progressed, in civilized countries at least, to act upon this distinction between in- 
animate nature and rational beings, so far as relates to the immediate exertion of 
physical strength, — the simple force of bone and muscle directly applied. The 
strong man is not now justified by the common sense of right in seizing and ap- 
propriating the wealth of the weak simply because he can, while at the same time, 
when dealing with Nature, he is never reproved for compelling her to the utmost 
of his power over her. Right is distinguished from might with reference to men, — 
a distinction which, as respects Nature, does not exist. 

103. As relates to intellectual superiority, the same distinction is likewise 
already acknowledged to an indefinite and fluctuating extent. The sharper is 
restrained from availing himself of his quickness of wit by the intervention of 
stringent laws and exemplary penalties. Upon what principle is that? It is the 
admission that man ought not, — that it is unjust or inequitable that man should 
use his superior mental endowments to his own private advantage, in dealing with 
men, while no such restriction lies upon him when dealing with Nature. He is 
bound to deal with them, contrary to the fact, precisely as if they had the same 
amount of strength and mental power as he has himself, or, rather, as if it were 
not a question of strength but of right ; in the same manner as, according to the 
canons of international law, the large and powerful State recognizes the equal 
sovereignty of the smallest independent community. The law of intercourse be- 
tween Individual Sovereigns is the same as between the concrete Sovereignties of 
existing States. To commit a breach of this higher law of Sovereign peerage is to 
secure to the stronger party an immediate and apparent advantage, to the destruc- 
tion of the less obvious but more substantial benefits resulting to both from the 
existence of a true social equilibrium. Such is the policy of the brigand and the 
pirate, who pounce upon their booty for the supply of their immediate wants, — 
because they can, — regardless of the fact that their practices will prove the dis- 
ruption of society and end in the destruction of the very commerce upon which 
they prey. 

104. In the intellectual sphere, the admission of this higher law has hitherto 
been made only up to an unascertained line. Superior talent or skill, naturally 
bestowed, have always been, and are still, practically recognized as giving superior 
right, except in the few extreme cases in which the enormity of the principle is too 
obvious to be overlooked, and in which the exercise of that superiority is defined 
by Fraud, Gambling, Swindling, or some other of the euphonious epithets by which 
society stigmatizes, in its ultimates, a rule of conduct which, in its more general 



Cost the Limit of Price. 83 

and pervading applications, it sanctions and approves. Whenever the perception 
of this true law shall have been thoroughly awakened ; when the public mind shall 
be wholly penetrated by the conviction that the employment of either physical or 
intellectual power, had by natural endowment, in any transaction between men, in 
such a manner as to gain an immediate and selfish advantage to the stronger party, 
is of the essential nature of fraud, swindling, and robbery, — society will rise to a 
new plane, and will then find a development as superior to our present civilization 
as that is to the savage state, — a development in which those who surrender most 
will as truly find their highest emolument as those who surrender least. Thus true 
science conducts us back, in some sense, to the sublime precept of religiou: "He 
that would be greatest among you let. him serve." 

105. So far, then, as the individual consumes directly products of his own labor, 
he enjoys the immediate advantage of his own talent, or skill, as the strong man 
enjoys his strength or the beautiful woman her beauty. But the moment he pro- 
poses to exchange his labor with other human beings, it is the harmonic law that 
he shall renounce that advantage entirely, recognizing the full equality of the infe- 
rior party. To claim it is to introduce an element into the social relations as dis- 
turbing in its nature as it would be if the handsome woman were to claim of right 
superior rank by virtue of her beauty, or the strong man impunity from the law 
by virtue of his strength. • 

106. It is characteristic of the most progressed or humanized society that the 
strong recognizes the equality of the weak. Hence the constant advancement of 
woman in the relative scale of position, — the sinking of physical superiority before 
intellectual, and finally of intellectual before the spiritual, affectionate, and aes- 
thetic. That sublime characteristic of the highest type of humanity is wholly 
wanting in the demand of the superior worker that the inferior shall make up the 
difference in excess of labor. It is preeminently exhibited, on the contrary, and 
the highest attainment of civilization achieved, when the basis of the exchange is 
shifted from the equality of products to the equality of burdens. The strong says 
to the weak, labor is painful and imposes a burden. It is not just between beings 
who hold human relations that you, who are weak, shall be required to endure a 
greater burden than I, who am strong. Hence we will exchange labor for labor, 
not according to its fruitfulness, but according to the repugnance which has to be 
overcome. 

107. Take an illustration as between nations. A small but industrious and 
civilized people inhabit a country lying between the dominions of a powerful em- 
pire on one side, and hordes of treacherous savages on the other, who threaten to 
invade and lay waste the country. The feeble nation applies to the powerful one 
to extend a degree of protection over them by establishing forts upon the frontier 
and adding the weight of their influence in overawing the savage tribes. Assume 
that the cost of the aid thus rendered is equal to one million of dollars per annum, 



84 The Science of Society. 

and that by estimate it saves the whole property of the weaker nation from destruc- 
tion, the income upon which amounts to a hundred million of dollars. What trib- 
ute in the nature of payment shall the weaker nation render to the stronger? 
According to one rule, it will be an amount equal to the expenditure by the 
stronger. According to the other, it will be an amount equal to the benefit in- 
curred, — namely, a yearly tribute equal to the whole products of the land. Is it 
not clear which is the humanitary, courteous, or civilized basis of the transaction 
and which the barbarous one? According to the latter, the choice of the people 
whose safety is endangered lies between two sets of savages, each of whom will 
rob them equally of all they possess. Is it not clear, then, that the humanitary 
basis of remuneration is not measured by the extent of the benefit conferred, — 
the Value, — but by the extent of the burden assumed, — the Cost. And is it not 
clear, again, in the case supposed, if the strong nation were still more powerful, so 
that the use of its name merely were a terror to its savage neighbors, and would 
suffice, with less extensive fortifications, as a mere demonstration of the animus to 
resist, or with no fortifications at all, to restrain them, that the cost of the defeuce 
would be decreased by such superiority of strength and weight of name, and that 
consequently the price of it should be diminished likewise, instead of being aug- 
mented thereby. 

Carpy out the analogy of this illustration to the case of the way in which natural 
talent and skili are made the basis of price in private transactions, and it will be 
perceived that the principle now acted on is the barbarous principle, — the principle 
of conquest and rapine, — the principle of an equality of benefits demanded between 
parties, one of whom is capable of conferring great benefits at slight cost, and the 
other only capable of conferring small ones at an equal or greater amount of cost, 
— a principle destructive of equality, equipoise, and harmony, and under the ope- 
ration of which the weaker are inevitably crushed and devoured by the stronger, 
to the utter annihilation of all hope of realizing the higher and more beautiful 
phases of possible human society. 

108. To illustrate still further. When a robust and hearty youth rises and 
stands, yielding his seat to a woman, an old man, or an invalid, he does so because, 
in consequence of his strength, it costs him less to stand, — it is less repugnant for 
him to do so than for the other. The superior power reduces the cost, and all re- 
fined and well-developed manhood admires the vindication of the principle in- 
volved, even while not understanding it as such. In this transaction there is no 
price demanded, but, if there were, it is obvious that the price to the robust man 
for yielding his advantage should be less than to the feeble, while upon the value 
principle it would be more. In this species of intercourse we already, then, draw 
the line between cultivated and advanced humanity, and barbarous or boorish 
humanity, precisely where these two principles diverge. With a more complete 
efflorescence of Humanitary Ethics, true principle will supersede the false through- 



Cost the Limit of Price. 85 

out the whole range of personal transactions. The adoption of the Cost Principle 
in commerce will not only insure the equitable distribution of wealth, and disperse 
the manifold evils which grow out of the pervading injustice of the existing sys- 
tem, but it will do more, — it will crown the common honors of life with a halo of 
mutual urbanity, and render the daily interchange of labor and of ordinary com- 
modities a perpetual sacrament of fraternal affection. 

109. It results, then, that the natural and necessary effect of the Cost Principle 
is to limit the relative power and advantage of the intellectually strong over the 
intellectually weak in the same manner as Law, Morality, Religion, Machinery, 
and the other appliances of civilization have already, in civilized countries, partially 
limited the power and neutralized the advantage of the physically strong over the 
physically weak, and to complete, even in the physical sphere, what Law, Morality, 
Religion, Machinery, and the other appliances of civilization have hitherto failed 
to accomplish, for the want of the more definite science of the subject. 

110. But, in order to the general adoption of this regulating principle, is not 
the consent of the strong man indispensable as well as that of the weak? By what 
means shall he be persuaded to make the sacrifice of his superior advantage? Is 
not the appeal solely to his benevolence, and has not past experience demonstrate! I 
that all such appeals are nearly powerless against the controlling current of per- 
sonal interests? 

111. Certainly the concurrence of both the powerful and the feeble is alike 
requisite to the complete and general adoption of the Cost Principle, but that 
cannot be said to be necessary to commence its application. It has already been 
stated that the Cost Principle affords the means to the laboring classes, who are 
kept now in comparative weakness and ignorance, of stepping out from under the 
oppressions of capital and leaving it with no foundation on which to rest in its 
usurped superiority over labor. Hence the weak are enabled by it to cope witli 
the strong, while the strong themselves will not long resist the innovation, for the 
reason that their own positive strength is also increased by the same means. It is 
only their relative superiority which is reduced by it. In other words, all classes 
will have their condition positively improved, the rich only a little less than the 
poor, so that the frightful inequalities of the present system will be obliterated 
and extinguished. An analogue of this effect is found in the material sphere, in 
the invention of gunpowder and firearms, for example. A pistol puts a small man 
and a large man upon the same footing of strength, or perhaps rather reverses it 
a little, as the large man presents a broader surface to the deadly aim. Still either 
party is a more powerful man with than without it. It serves to establish a balance 
of power, while at the same time it augments the power of both. It is the same 
with larger arms and larger bodies of men. Hence the pistol, the blunderbuss, 
and the carronade have been among the greatest civilizers of mankind. It is the 
same, again, with laws and the civil state which have been instituted to equalize 



86 The Science of Society. 

the diversities of strength among men by substituting arbitrary rules for physical 
force. Like firearms and gunpowder, they are a barbarous remedy for a more 
barbarous evil, and will give place, in turn, with the progress of man, to the gov- 
ernment of mere principles, accepted into and proving operative upon the indivi- 
dual mind. 

112. In this manner the Cost Principle has in it the means of first compelling 
and then reconciling to its adoption those to whom the possession of superior in- 
tellectual powers or cunning, with the accumulations of capital, give now the 
ascendancy. This, however, only so far as such compulsion shall prove necessary. 
It is a grand mistake to assume, as the inclusive rule, that those who have the best 
end of the bargain in our present iniquitous social relations are averse to a reor- 
ganization upon the basis of justice. The ignorant and selfish among them are so, 
but it is among this superior class that the best and most devoted friends of the 
rights of man are likely to be found. The progress of the race has always been 
officered by leaders from among the Patricians. 'It is among those who gain the 
advantage, and are thrown to the surface and exposed to the blessed air and light 
of Heaven by the fluctuations of the tarbulent ocean of human affairs, that the 
greatest development occurs ; and along with development comes the sentiment of 
humanity and human brotherhood. The masses of men have seldom been indebted 
solely to themselves for what they have at any time gained. The most unbounded 
benevolence is often coupled with the possession of great wealth. But how often 
has the sentiment been repelled and made to recoil upon itself with disappointment 
and disgust at the results of its own efforts to benefit mankind ! How often has 
the harsh lesson been taught to the rich and the good that the sentiment is power- 
less without the science, — that Love, without its complement in Wisdom, is blind 
and destructive of its own ends! 

113. Hence, whenever a true science of society shall have been demonstrably 
discovered, when the means of permanent benefit to the race shall be unquestion- 
ably at hand, benevolent capitalists will assuredly be found in the first ranks of 
those who will concur to realize the higher results of human society, to which such 
knowledge is competent to conduct. The advanced and highly developed among 
men are always ready to. sacrifice their relative superiority for the greater good of 
all, for no other reason than simply because they are men. Hence, again, although 
the Cost Principle is fully adequate to enable the poor, feeble, and oppressed 
classes to emancipate themselves from fhe oppressions of capital, it will, in prac- 
tice, be put to no such strain. The future will show that the rich and poor will 
freely cooperate with hearty sincerity in the work of social regeneration, upon 
scientific and truly constructive principles. 

114. It is proper at this point to show more explicitly the extension and com- 
prehensiveness of the term Cost. It has been spoken of in the preceding pages 
chiefly as human repugnance overcome in the performance of labor, It is more 



Cost the Limit of Price. 87 

accurate to define it, however, simply as human repugnance overcome in any transac- 
tion. It has both an active or positive, and a passive or negative, aspect, to which 
last a slight reference has already been had. (81.) The repugnance overcome in 
the actual performance of labor is the active phase of the subject, but there is also 
repugnance overcome in the mere sacrifice or surrender of any thing which we 
possess, and which we require at the time for our own convenience or happiness. 
This last is the passive aspect of Cost. Thus, for example, if I paint pictures or 
manufacture watches for sale, the cost, and consequently the price at which I must 
sell them, to deal upon the equitable principle, is the amount of labor contained 
in them; but, if I have in my possession — not as an article of merchandise, but 
for my own pleasure and convenience — a watch or a favorite painting, — say, for 
example, it is a present from a friend, for which reason I attach to it a particular 
value, — and you, taking a fancy to it, wish to induce me to part with it, then the 
legitimate measure of price is the amount of sacrifice which it is to me, — in other 
words, the degree of repugnance which I feel to surrendering it, how much soever 
that may exceed the positive Cost of the article, and whatever relation it may hold 
to its positive Value. 

115. It is the same, as already observed, even with reference to natural wealth, 
in which there is no positive Cost, and so of everything which we require, in kind, 
for our own use. (81.) Thus, for example, although land in its wild state is not 
rightfully the subject of price, and although, when simply enclosed, its positive 
Cost is the labor of enclosing it, yet, if I have selected a pleasant situation for my 
own habitation and culture, and am induced to part with it for the accommodation 
of another, the price in that case is legitimately augmented by whatever amount 
of repugnance I may feel to making the surrender. 

116. The exact thinker will readily perceive the distinction between objects of 
all sorts which are required for personal convenience at the time, and surplus pro- 
perty or capital not needed for present use, or needed only as the means of pro- 
curing other conveniences by means of exchange, — between things properly in 
commerce, and things taken out of commerce by special appropriation. In the 
latter case the labor contained in or bestowed upon the property is the whole of its 
equitable price. In the former it is augmented by the amount of sacrifice expe- 
rienced in parting with it, occasioned by the present need. 

117. In the case of passive or negative Cost, — the mere repugnance to the sur- 
render of what is at the time serving a personal purpose, — none but the party 
making the surrender can know the real extent of the sacrifice, or can judge with 
accuracy of the equity of the price charged. Hence, with reference to things not 
properly in commerce, a common average of estimate cannot be attained as in the 
ordinary case of exchanges. (195.) But even here the operation of the principle 
is quite distinct from that of value as the limit of price. The party making the 
surrender will satisfy his own conscience by estimating the degree of sacrifice to 



88 The Science of Society. 

him, and not as under the value standard by estimating the degree of the want of 
the other party. In other words, whenever he has arrived at a price which he 
would prefer to take rather than not sell, he is restrained from going farther, with- 
out inquiring whether he has reached the highest point to which the purchaser 
would go. This distinction between the active Cost of the labor of production and 
the passive Cost of surrender is important in various ways, and especially, as we 
shall see, in settling the question of interest or rent on capital. (226.) 

118. As it is the positive Cost of the labor of production, alone, which relates 
to things properly in commerce, it is that which is usually meant by Cost, unless 
the repugnance of surrender is especially mentioned in addition. 

119. There is still another observation in relation to the comprehensiveness of 
the term Cost. Although it refers back, in its rigid technical sense, to the original 
labor of production, measured by its repugnance, and fixes the price in labor, still 
it holds good as the equitable measure of price with reference to all articles pur- 
chased with money, under the present system, and uot traced back to their com- 
ponent, labor. Thus an article purchased for a given price in money, and sold 
again for the same amount of money, plus the labor of the transaction, is sold for 
Cost. The Cost Principle is, therefore, merely the entire abandonment of profit making, 
whether it relates to labor production or dealings in money. The method of keep- 
ing a shop and selling goods upon the Cost Principle, during the transition period, 
— that is, while the community is too small to supply all its own wants, — is to 
charge for each article its original money Cost with all the money charges and con- 
tingencies, in money, and the labor of buying, handling, and selling, in labor, the 
time occupied in the transaction being measured by the clock, and charged accord- 
ing to the estimated repugnance of that kind of labor. A yard of cloth is, there- 
fore, so many cents in money and so many minutes in labor. The particulars of 
the management of such stores, and the immense power which they exert over the 
commercial habits of large districts of country within their influence, will be shown 
in Mr. Warren's work on Practical Details. 

120. The comprehensiveness of the term Labor needs also to be denned. By 
Labor is meant, in the first place, not merely manual, but intellectual and oral la- 
bor as well, — whatever is done or performed by the hand, head, or tongue, and 
which involves repugnance or painfulness overcome, — the measure of price being 
based upon the well-known principle that man naturally seeks the agreeable and 
shuns that which is disagreeable or painful. 

121. In the second place, the Labor by which price is measured is not always 
merely the particular performance done at the time. Whatever has required an 
especial skill obtained by previous labor, unproductive at the time, has its price 
augmented by its own due proportion of such loss, from previous necessary unpro- 
ductive labor. For example, the surgeon may equitably charge for each surgical 
operation not only the time occupied in it, measured by its repugnance, but an aii- 



Cost the Limit of Price. 89 

quot portion of the time necessarily expended in acquiring the knowledge to enable 
him to do it in a skilful manner, according to the repugnance to him of that pre- 
liminary labor. So of every other necessary contingency, — all necessary contin- 
gencies, such as prior preparatory labor, risk incurred, etc., entering into and constitut- 
ing a portion of Cost. 

122. It results from what has been said that the basis of vendible property is 
human labor, and that the measure of such property is the amount of labor which 
there is, so to speak, laid up in the article owned. The article is the product of 
labor, and is therefore the representative of labor. Price is that which is given 
either for labor directly, or for property, which is the product of labor, — that is, 
for labor indirectly, and it should therefore be a precise equivalent for that labor. 
The only proper ground of difference, then, between the price of a side-saddle and 
the price of a house is the difference in the amount of human labor which has been 
bestowed upon the one and upon the other. It follows, again, that the mode of ar- 
riving at the legitimate price of any article whatever is to reduce it first to labor. 
For example : if we take a house to pieces, we trace it back to trees growing in the 
woods, to clay, and sand, and lime, and iron, etc., lying in the earth. All that 
makes it a house, and entitles it to a price, as property, is the human labor that 
there is in it. That house over the way is, then, so many hours of labor at brick- 
making, so many hours of carpenter's work, so many of lime-burning, so many of 
iron-work, nail-cutting, so many at glass-blowing, so many at hauling, so many at 
planning, draughting, etc., etc., etc. The whole house is nothing but human labor 
dried, preserved, laid away. Each of these hours of labor in different occupations 
may have a different degree of repugnance, so that to estimate the gross amouut 
of labor in the house it is necessary to bring them all to a common denomination. 
This is done by reducing them to the standard degree of repugnance in the stan- 
dard labor, — corn-raising, — which is then expressed in the standard product of 
that kind of labor, — namely, so many pounds of corn. Hence the price of a house, 
or of any other object, is said to be so many pounds, or so many hours, meaning 
so many pounds of corn, or so many hours of labor at corn-raising, in the same 
manner as we now say so many dollars and cents. By this means all price is con- 
stantly referred to labor, and rendered definite, instead of being referred to a 
standard which is itself continually expanding and contracting by all the contin- 
gencies of speculation or trade. (77.) 

123. The first point is to obtain a standard for a single locality, after which it 
is quite easy to adjust the standard of other localities to it. Agricultural labor is 
first selected, because it is the great staple branch of human industry. The most 
staple article of agricultural product is then taken, which for this country, and es- 
pecially for the great valley of the Mississippi, is Indian corn. In another country 
it may be wheat or something else, although Indian corn, wherever it is produced, 
will be found to have more of the appropriate qualities for a standard than any 



90 The Science of Society. 

other article whatsoever, being more invariable in quality, more uniform in the 
amount produced by the same amount of labor in a given locality, and more uni- 
form in the extent of the demand than any other article. At a given locality, or, 
as I have stated, at a great variety of localities in the Western States, the standard 
product of Indian corn is twenty pounds to the hour's labor, — the measurement 
by pounds being also more inflexible or less variant than that by bulk. If, then, 
in some other locality, — as, for example, New England, — the product of an hour's 
labor devoted to raising corn is only ten. pounds of corn, the equivalent of the stan- 
dard hour's labor there will be ten pounds of corn, while in the West it will be 
twenty pounds. It is the hour's labor in that species of agriculture which is there- 
fore the actual unit of comparison, of which the product, whatever it may be, is 
the local representative. And in the same manner, in another country wheat may 
be the standard, — as, for example, in England, — and may be reckoned at ten 
pounds to the hour, or whatever is found by trial to be the fact. The reduction 
of the standard of one locality to that of another will then be no more difficult 
than the reduction of different currencies to one value, as now practised. 

124. There is an absolute necessity for some standard of cost, and it is not a 
question of principle, but of expediency, what article is adopted. It is the same 
necessity which is recognized at present for a standard of value, which is sought 
for, and by some persons erroneously supposed to be found, in money. The ques- 
tion may still be asked: Why not employ money as the standard with which to 
compare other things, and as a circulating medium, as is done now? The answer 
is found in the uncertain and fluctuating nature of money, — in the fact that it re- 
presents nothing definite. 

125. Money has professedly two uses : (1) as a standard of value, and (2) as a 
circulating medium. 

First, then, as a standard of value, or a measure with which to compare other 
values. It does not even profess to be a standard of cost. It has no relation what- 
ever to the cost, or, in other words, to the labor which there is in the different 
commodities for which it is given as price, because there is no question about cost 
in existing commerce, the value alone being taken into account. But value is in- 
capable of a scientific estimate, as will be more specifically shown in the next chap- 
ter. (134.) Hence it is fluctuating because it relates to nothing definite. But 
what are the capacities of the yard-stick itself? Is it fixed or elastic? The theory 
is that gold and silver are selected as standards of value because the quantity of 
those commodities in the world is more uniform than that of most other articles. 
If the fact be granted, then gold and silver have one of the fitting properties of a 
standard. But gold and silver are not convenient as a circulating medium. Hence 
paper money is assumed as a representative of specie. So far very well again. 
There was a time when bank-paper was an exact representation of specie, if it re- 
presented nothing else. The old bank of Amsterdam, the mother of the banking 



Cost the Limit of Price. 91 

system, issued only dollar for dollar. Her bills were merely certificates of deposit 
for so much specie. So far, then, the yard-stick did not stretch nor contract, while 
the paper money was more convenient as a medium of circulation than the specie. 
But with the development of the banking system two, three, five, or more dollars 
of paper money are issued for one dollar of specie on deposit. The amount is then 
expanded and contracted, according to the fluctuations of trade and the judgments 
or speculating interests of perhaps five hundred different boards of bank directors. 
How is it, then, with the inflexibility of your standard? Your yard-stick is one 
year one foot long and the next year five feet long. The problem of existing 
finance, then, is to measure values which are in their nature positively incapable of 
measurement, by money, which is in its nature positively incapable of measuring 
any thing. It is therefore uncertainty X fluctuation = price. 

126. There is no such thing, therefore, in money as a standard of value. As a 
circulating medium merely, considering no other properties, nor the reasons why 
we should have a circulating medium at all, nothing better can be devised than 
paper money. It is thin, light, pliant, and convenient in all respects. 

127. To make gold the standard of cost, instead of value, would be to take as 
much gold as is ordinarily dug in an hour in those countries where it is procured 
— say California — as the price of an hour's labor in other branches of industry 
equally troublesome and repugnant. This may perhaps be one dollar, which would 
make the price of labor a dollar an hour, and the difference between that price in 
this article and the usual price of labor in the same article — which is rendered ne- 
cessary now, as the means of acquiring all other commodities — is some indication 
of the degree to which labor is robbed by adopting the value standard instead of the 
cost standard of price. But the fact is that no average of the product of gold- 
digging can be made. It is proverbially uncertain. The product of gold, there- 
fore, regarded as a standard of any thing, is as nearly worthless as the product of 
any article can be. The demand for it in the arts is also exceptional and uncer- 
tain. Apart from the factitious demand resulting from the fact that it is made a 
nominal standard and a medium, it is not in any sense a staple article. It would 
be just as philosophical to measure all other industry by the product of the mack- 
erel fishery, or the manufacture of rock candy or castor oil, as it would be to 
measure it by gold. The result of all this investigation is therefore this: that the 
product of gold, and, for the same reason, that of silver, is quite unfit for the first 
purpose we have in view, which is to select a staple species of labor with which to 
compare other labor, while corn or wheat does fulfill those conditions; and (2) 
that paper is just what is wanted as a circulating medium, provided it can be made 
to rest upon a proper basis, and represent what ought to be represented by a cir- 
culating medium. 

128. Now, what is it which ought to be represented by a circulating medium ? 
Clearly it is price, — the price of commodities. The pledge or promise should be 



92 The Science of Society. 

exactly equivalent to, as it stands in the place of, the commodity or commodities 
to be given hereafter. These commodities, which the paper stands in the place of, 
are the price of what was received. The equitable limit of price is, we have seen, 
the cost of the articles received. The promise is therefore rightly the equivalent 
of, or goes to the extent of, the cost of the articles received. But the cost of an 
article is, we have seen, the labor there is in it, rightly measured. Every issue of 
the circulating medium should therefore be a representative of, or pledge for, a cer- 
tain amount of human labor, or for some commodity which has in it an equal 
amount of human labor; and, to avoid all question about what commodity shall be 
substituted, it is proper that a staple or standard article, the cost of which all agree 
upon, should be selected. 

We return, then, to the Labor Note as the legitimate germ of a circulating 
medium. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 93 



CHAPTER IV. 

VALUE DISTINGUISHED FROM COST. 

129. The second grand result from the principle of Equity — Cost the Limit of 
Price — is that the value of labor or of a commodity has nothing whatever to do legiti- 
mately with fixing the price of the labor or commodity. This proposition would be 
deduced partially from what has been already shown; it requires, however, to be 
more explicitly stated and more conclusively demonstrated. It is, as well as the 
result considered in the last chapter in relation to natural skill or talent, quite 
new, and therefore surprising. 

130. There is certainly nothing more reasonable, according to existing ideas, 
than that "a thing ought to bring what it is worth." No proposition could be more 
seemingly innocent upon the face of it than that. (19.) There is no statement 
upon any subject upon which mankind would more generally concur, and yet that 
statement covers a fallacy which lies at the basis of the prevalent system of exploita- 
tion or civilized cannibalism. It is precisely at this point that the whole world has 
committed its most fatal blunder. It will be the purpose of this chapter to expose 
that error so obviously that it can no longer lurk in obscurity even in the least 
enlightened mind. To that end I beg the especial attention of the reader to the 
technical distinction between Value and Cost, — a point of great importance to this 
whole discussion. 

131. "What a thing is worth" is another expression for the Value of a com- 
modity or labor. The Value of a commodity or labor is the degree of benefit which it 
confers upon the person who receives it, or to whose use it is applied. The Cost of it is, 
on the other hand, as already explained, the degree of burden which the production of 
the commodity or the performance of the labor imposed upon the person who produced or 
performed it. They are therefore by no means the same. No two things can pos- 
sibly be more distinct. The burden or cost may be very great and the benefit or 
value very little, or vice versa. In the case of an exchange or transfer of an article 
from one person to another, the Cost relates to the party who makes the transfer, 
the burden of the production falling on him, and the Value to the party to whom 
the transfer is made, the article going to his benefit. It is the same if the object 
exchanged is labor directly. It follows, therefore, that to say that " a thing should 
bring what it is worth," which is the same as to say that its price should be measured 
by its value, is quite the opposite of affirming that it should bring as much as it cost 
the producer to produce it. Hence, both rules cannot be true, for they conflict with 



94 The Science of Society. 






and destroy each other. But we have already seen that it is exactly equitable that 
Cost be adopted as the universal limit of price, — in other words, that as much bur- 
den shall be assumed by each party to the exchange as is imposed upon the oppo- 
site party. Consequently the accepted axiom of trade that " a thing should bring 
what it is worth " proves, when tested by simply balancing the scales of Equity, to 
be not only erroneous, but, so to speak, the antipodes of the true principle. Such 
is the result when we recur to fundamental investigation. It will be rendered 
equally obvious in the sequel, by a comparison of the consequences of the two prin- 
ciples in operation, that Cost is the true and Value the false measure of price. 

132. But although Value is not the legitimate limit of Price nor even an ele- 
ment in the price, it is, nevertheless, an element in the bargain. It is the Value of 
the thing to be acquired which determines the purchaser to purchase. It belongs to the 
man who labors or produces an article, estimating for himself, as we have seen, the 
amount of burden he has assumed, to fix the price, measured by that burden or 
Cost. He alone knows it, and he alone, therefore, can determine it. It belongs, 
on the other hand, to the purchaser to estimate for himself the Value of the labor 
or commodity to him. He alone can do so in fact, for he alone knows the nature 
of his own wants. By the settlement of the first point — the Cost to the producer 
— the Price becomes a fixed sum. If the Value then exceeds that sum in the esti- 
mation of the other party, he will purchase; otherwise, not. Hence the Value, 
though not an element in the Price, is an element in the bargain. The Price is a 
consideration wholly for the vender, and the Value a consideration wholly for the 
purchaser. 

133. As this is also a point of great importance, let us state it again. If you 
require and desire to obtain one hour or one year of my services, or the results of 
those services in commodities, which is the same thing, it is a matter which does 
not concern me, — it is impertinence on my part to concern myself with the ques- 
tion of the degree of benefit you will derive from, such services. That is purely a 
question for your own consideration, and determines you whether you can afford 
to give me the equitable price of my labor, — whether the value to you equals the 
cost to me, — that is, it determines the demand. Your estimate of that value or bene- 
fit to you may be based on considerations obvious to others, or upon a mere whim 
or caprice to the gratification of which others Avould attach no importance. But 
it belongs to the Sovereignty of the Individual to gratify even one's whims or ca- 
prices without hindrance or interference from others, at his own cost, which is, 
when the services of others are required to that end, by paying to them the cost to 
them of such services. 

134. On the other hand, it is equally an impertinence for you, in the case sup- 
posed, to attempt to settle for me the degree of attraction or repugnance which 
there is to me in' the performance of the services which you require. No one else 
but myself can possibly know that, No one else can therefore fix a just price up- 



Cost the Limit of Price. 95 

on my labor. Hence it follows that both value and cost enter into a bargain, even 
when legitimately made. But value goes solely to determine the demand, and is 
solely cognizable by the purchaser or consumer, — by him who receives, while cost (or 
burden) goes to determine the price, and is solely cognizable by the seller or pro- 
ducer, — by him who renders. By this means the cost of each one's acts is made to 
fall on himself, which is the essential condition to the rightful exercise of the Sov- 
ereignty of the Individual. If you over-estimate the value to you of my services, 
you endure the cost or disagreeable consequences of your mistake or want of judg- 
ment. If I, on the other hand, under-estimate the cost or endurance of the per- 
formance to me, the cost of that error falls on me, submitting each of us to the 
government of consequences, the only legitimate corrective. If, again, I over- 
estimate the cost to me and ask a price greater than your estimate of the value to 
you, there is no bargain, and I have lost the opportunity of earning a price mea- 
sured by the real cost of the performance, so that the cost of my mistake falls again 
on me; while — the market being open, and a thorough adjustment of supply to 
demand being established — others will make a juster estimate, whose services you 
will procure, and you will suffer no inconvenience. Competition will regulate any 
disposition on my part to overcharge. (160.) 

135. All this is reversed in our existing commerce. The vender adjusts his 
price to what he supposes to be its value to the purchaser, — that is, to the degree 
of want in which the purchaser is found, — never to what the commodity cost him- 
self; thus interfering with what cannot concern him, except as a means of taking 
an undue advantage. The purchaser, on the other hand, offers a price based up- 
on his knowledge or surmise of what the degree of want of the vender may force 
him to consent to take. Hence the cannibalism of trade. 

136. But it is objected that in the case supposed above, while nominally adjust- 
ing my price to the degree of repugnance to myself, I may in fact take into account 
the degree of your want, and charge you as much as I think you will endure. This 
objection, otherwise stated, is simply this, — that the Individual, in the exercise of 
his sovereign freedom, may abandon the Cost Principle, or, in other words, the 
true principle, and return to the value, or false principle. That is, in other words, 
again, simply to affirm that there is nothing in the true principle to force the In- 
dividual to comply with it, to the extent of depriving him of his freedom to do 
otherwise. This is granted. Any such compulsion would infringe upon the prin- 
ciple of the Sovereignty of the Individual, which is, if possible, still more import- 
ant than the Cost Principle itself. Once for all let it be distinctly understood that 
the principles of Equitable Commerce do not serve directly and mainly to coerce 
men into true or harmonic relations when destitute of the desire for such relations. 
Their first office is, on the other hand, to inform those who do desire such rela- 
tions, how they may be attained. If it is assumed that there are no such persons, 
then, certainly, the supply of true principles, of any sort, is a supply without a de- 
mand, — but not otherwise. 



96 The Science of Society. 

137. The secondary or indirect effect of true commercial principles in operation 
will be, however, correctional, and in one sense coercive, but coercive in a sense 
entirely compatible with freedom. It will be to throw the consequences of each 
one's deviation from right practice upon himself, leaving him free to exercise his 
own Sovereignty, but free to do so, as he ought, at his own cost, while they will 
surround him with a public sentiment in favor of honesty more potent than laws, 
at the same time that they will remove the temptations now existing to infringe 
the rights of others. It will be seen at another point that competition, which is 
now the tyrant that forces men to be dishonest, will, under these principles, operate 
with equal power to induce them to be honest. (160, 206.) 

138. An illustration of the entire disconnection between Price and the Value 
to the purchaser is found in the one-price store, in existing commerce. Upon this 
plan of trade the prices are fixed by the merchant-vender of the goods, and each 
article is labeled at a fixed and invariable amount. The customer has nothing 
whatever to do with fixing those prices. On the other hand, it is the purchaser 
alone who determines whether the Value of an article to him is sufficient to induce 
him to purchase at the price fixed. In these particulars the operation is the same 
as that of Equitable Commerce. It differs, however, in the essential particular that 
the merchant, in fixing his prices, is governed by no scientific principle. The 
prices are not adjusted by any equitable standard. They rest upon an uncertain 
and fluctuating basis, partly Cost, partly the necessities or cupidity of the vender, 
and partly the supply and demand or the supposed Value to the purchaser. Value 
is thus made actually an element of the price in a general way, though not in the 
particular case. The vender refuses to vary his price according to the particular 
Value to the particular purchaser, but he has previously taken into the account 
the general value to purchasers at large. The case is only good, therefore, to illus- 
trate the single point for which it was adduced. — namely, the separability of Price 
and Value to the purchaser, — the fact that they are not necessarily commingled 
with each other. The ticket at the theatre, the public lecture, the railroad, etc., 
furnishes another illustration of the same fact. The price is invariable, and the 
purchaser is left to determine for himself whether the Value equals the Cost; if so 
in his opinion, there is a bargain, otherwise not. 

139. As respects the propriety of measuring Price by Value, in the first place, 
it is essentially impossible to measure Value exactly, or, in other words, to ascertain 
the precise worth of labor or commodities. 

Cost is a thing which looks to the past, and is therefore certain. Value is a 
thing which looks to the future, and is therefore contingent and uncertain. A 
bushel of potatoes lies before us. It is possible to estimate with accuracy how 
much human labor it ordinarily takes to produce that amount of that article, and 
how disagreeable the labor is as compared with other kinds, and then we have the 
standard cost of the article ; but who will undertake to say what the value of that 



Cost the Limit of Price. 97 

bushel of potatoes is as it stands in the market? Value, remember, is the degree 
of benefit it will confer upon the person or persons who are to consume it. That 
value, it is obvious, will vary with every one of the fifty thousand persons in the 
city who may chance to purchase it, and will vary with the extremes of saving 
twenty human lives (as it may do on shipboard, for example) and nothing at all, 
for the potatoes may stock a larder already overstocked and be permitted to decay, 
appropriated to no beneficial purpose whatsoever. As every one of the twenty 
starving persons would gladly have given at least ten thousand dollars for his share 
of the potatoes rather than not have had them, the value of the bushel of potatoes 
is any thing between cipher and two hundred thousand dollars. 

Take a more complicated case. It is possible to calculate how much it costs, 
down to the fraction of a cent (or, more properly, of an hour's labor), to convey a 
man from New York to Albany on a first-class steamboat, — the Isaac Newton or 
the Hendrick Hudson for example, — taking into account the cost of construction, 
the cost of running, the number of persons regularly traveling among whom the 
expense is to be divided, etc. But who will undertake to calculate the different 
values of a trip up the Hudson to the eight hundred or a thousand persons who 
gather at the wharf at the departure of one of those magnificent boats? One is 
neglecting his business at home and going on a speculation in which he will lose a 
thousand dollars. How much is the trip worth to him? There is a bridegroom 
and bride going off to enjoy the honeymoon. How much in hard money is the 
trip worth to them? There stands a poor invalid who hopes to recover a little 
health by the cool breezes on the quiet river. There is a young man fresh from 
school, just starting out to see the world and gratify his curiosity. There is a 
sharper who will cheat somebody out of a few hundreds before he gets back, and 
so on. What is the Value to each of these of a trip up the Hudson? Value is the 
benefit to be done to each. How big is a piece of chalk? How much is consider- 
able? How far is a good ways? And yet all the political economy, all the cal- 
culations of finance, all the banking, all the trading and commercial transactions 
in the world, are based upon the idea of the measurement and comparison of 
Values. Even Mr. Kellogg, Mr. Gray, and others who write as financial reformers, 
and whose labors in demonstrating the oppressive operation of interest or rent on 
money are invaluable, fall into the same error. Mr. Kellogg has a chapter "On 
the Power of Money to Measure Value," and asserts without question that this is 
one of the legitimate functions of a circulating medium. 

140. It is possible, it is true, for parties to form an estimate of relative values, 
based upon their present knowledge of all future contingencies, and thus to prefer 
one thing to another in a certain ratio; but the very next event which occurs may 
show the calculation of chances to have been entirely fallacious, and the real value 
of the object, on the one hand or the other, to be entirely different from what was 
anticipated. Hence, every exchange, based upon the comparison of values, is a 



98 The Science of Society. 

speculation upon the probabilities of the future, aud not a scientific measurement 
of that which already exists. All trade under the existing system is therefore 
speculation, in kind, the uncertainty differing in degree, and all speculation is 
gambling, or the staking of risks against risks. The instrument of measurement 
is equally defective, as has been already shown in discussing the nature of money. 
(77, 125.) 

141. In the next place, if it were possible to measure Values precisely, the ex- 
change of commodities according to Value would still be a system of mutual conquest and 
oppression, — not a beneficent reciprocation of equivalents. This will appear by 
one or two simple illustrations. 

142. I. — Suppose I am a wheelwright in a small village, and the only one of 
my trade. You are traveling with certain valuables in your carriage, which breaks 
down opposite my shop. It will take an hour of my time to mend the carriage. 
You can get no other means of conveyance, and the loss to you, if you fail to arrive 
at the neighboring town in season fo? the sailing of a certain vessel, will be five 
hundred dollars, which fact you mention to me, in good faith, in order to quicken 
my exertions. I give one hour of my work and mend the carriage. What am I 
in equity entitled to charge — what should be the limit of price upon my labor? 

Let us apply the different measures and see how they will operate. If Value is 
the limit of price, then the price of the hour's labor should be five hundred dol- 
lars. That is the equivalent of the value of the labor to you. If cost is the limit 
of price, then you should pay me a commodity, or commodities, or a representative 
in currency which will procure me commodities, having in them one hour's labor 
equally as hard as the mending of the carriage, without the slightest reference to 
the degree of benefit which that labor has bestowed on you : or, putting the illus- 
tration in money, thus ; assuming the twenty-five cents to be an equivalent for an 
hour's labor of an artisan in that particular trade, then according to the Cost Prin- 
ciple I should be justified in asking only twenty-five cents, but according to the 
Value Principle I should be justified in asking five hundred dollars. 

143. The Value Principle, in some form of expression, is, as I have said, the 
only recognized principle of trade throughout the world. "A thing is worth what 
it will bring in the market." Still if I were to charge you five hundred dollars, or 
a fourth part of that sum, and, taking advantage of your necessities, force you to 
pay it, everybody would denounce me, the poor wheelwright, as an extortioner and 
a scoundrel. Why? Simply because this is an unusual application of the prin- 
ciple. Wheelwrights seldom have a chance to make such a "speculation," and 
therefore it is not according to the "established usages of trade." Hence its man- 
ifest injustice shocks, in such a case, the common sense of right. Meanwhile you, 
a wealthy merchant, are daily rolling up an enormous fortune by doing business 
upon #xe same principle which you condemn in the wheelwright, and nobody finds 
fault. At every scarcity in the market you immediately raise the price of every 



Cost the Limit of Price. 99 

article you hold. It is your business to take advantage of the necessities of those 
with whom you deal, by selling to them according to the Value to them, and not 
according to the Cost to you. You go further. You, by every means in your 
power, create those necessities by buying up particular articles and holding them 
out of the market until the demand becomes pressing, by circulating false reports 
of short crops, and by other similar tricks known to the trade. This is the same 
in principle as if the wheelwright had first dug the rut in which your carriage up- 
set and then charged you the five hundred dollars. 

Yet hitherto no one has thought of seriously questioning the principle, — namely, 
that " Value is the limit of Price," or, in other words, that it is right to take for a 
tiling what it is worth. It is upon this principle or maxim that all honorable trade 
professes now to be conducted, until instances arise in which its oppressive opera- 
tion is so glaring and repugnant to the moral sense of mankind that those who 
carry it out are denounced as rogues and cheats. In this manner a sort of conven- 
tional limit is placed upon the application of a principle which is equally the prin- 
ciple of every swindling transaction, and of what is called legitimate commerce. 
The discovery has not hitherto been made that the principle itself is essentially 
vicious, and that in its infinite and all-pervading variety of applications this 
vicious principle is the source of the injustice, inequality of condition, and frightful 
pauperism and wretchedness which characterize the existing state of our so-called 
civilization. Still less has the discovery been made that there is another simple 
principle of traffic which, once understood and applied in practice, will effectually 
rectify all t'hose monstrous evils, and introduce into human society the reign of ab- 
solute equity in all property relations, while it will lay the foundations of universal 
harmony in the social and moral relations as well. 

144. II. — Suppose it costs me ten minutes' labor to concoct a pill which will 
save your life when nothing else will ; and suppose, at the same time, to render the 
case simple, that the knowledge of the ingredients came to me by accident, with- 
out labor or cost. It is clear that your life is worth to you more than your fortune. 
Am I, then, entitled to demand of you for the nostrum the whole of your property, 
more or less? Clearly so, if it is right to take for a thing what it is worth, which is 
theoretically the highest ethics of trade. 

145. Forced, on the one hand, by the impossibility, existing in the nature of 
things, of ascertaining and measuring positive values, or of determining, in other 
words, what a thing is really worth, and rendered partially conscious by the obvious 
hardship and injustice of every unusual or extreme application of the principle that 
it is either no rule or a bad one, and not guided by the knowledge of any true prin- 
ciple out of the labyrinth of conflicting rights into which the false principle con- 
ducts, the world has practically abandoned the attempt to combine Equity with 
Commerce, and lowered its standard of morality to the inverse statement of the 
formula, — namely, that "A thing is worth what it will bring," or, in other words, that 



l.cfC 



100 Tlie Science of Society. 

it is fitting and proper to take for a thing when sold whatever can be got for it. 
This, then, is what is denominated the Market Value of an article, as distinguished 
from its actual value. Without being more equitable as a measure of price, it cer- 
tainly has a great practical advantage over the more decent theoretical statement, 
in the fact that it is possible to ascertain by experiment how much you can force 
people, through their necessities, to give. The principle, in this form, measures 
the price by the degree of want on the part of the purchaser, — that is, by what he 
supposes will prove to be the value or benefit to him of the commodity purchased, 
in comparison with that of the one with which he parts in the transaction. Hence 
it becomes immediately and continually the interest of the seller to place the pur- 
chaser in a condition of as much want as possible, to "corner" him, as the phrase 
is in Wall street, and force him to buy at the dearest rate. If he is unable to in- 
crease his actual necessity, he resorts to every means of creating an imaginary 
want by false praises bestowed upon the qualities and uses of his goods. Hence 
the usages of forestalling the market, of confusing the public knowledge of Supply 
and Demand, of advertising and puffing worthless commodities, and the like, 
which constitute the existing commercial system, — a system which, in our age, is 
ripening into putrefaction, and coming to offend the nostrils of good taste no less 
than the innate sense of right, which, dreadfully vitiating as it is, it has failed 
wholly to extinguish. 

146. The Value Principle in this form, as in the other, is therefore felt, without 
being distinctly understood, to be essentially diabolical, and hence it undergoes 
again a kind of sentimental modification wherever the sentiment for honesty is 
most potent. This last and highest expression of the doctrine of honesty, as now 
known in the world, may be stated in the form of the hostatory precept, " Don't 
be too bad," or, "Don't gouge too deep." No Political Economist, Financier, 
Moralist, or Religionist has any more definite standard of right in commercial 
transactions than that. It is not too much to affirm that neither Political Econo- 
mist, Financier, Moralist, nor Religionist knows at this day, nor ever has known, 
what it is to be honest. The religious teacher, who exhorts his hearers from Sab- 
bath to Sabbath to be fair in their dealings with each other and with the outside 
world, does not know, and could not for his life tell, how much he is, in fair deal- 
ing or equity, bound to pay his washerwoman or his housekeeper for any service 
whatever which they may render. The sentiment of honesty exists, but the science 
of honesty is wanting. The sentiment is first in order. The science must be an 
outgrowth, a consequential development, of the sentiment. The precepts of Christ- 
ian Morality deal properly with that which is the soul of the other, leaving to 
intellectual investigation the discovery of its scientific complement. 

147. It follows from what has been said that the Value Principle is the commer- 
cial embodiment of the essential element of conquest and war, — war transferred 
from the battle-field to the counter, — none the less opposed, however, to the spirit 



Cost the Limit of Price. 101 

of Christian Morality or the sentiment of human brotherhood. In bodily conflict 
the physically strong conquer and subject the physically weak. In the conflict of 
trade the intellectually astute and powerful conquer and subject those who are intel- 
lectually feeble, or whose intellectual development is not of the precise kind to fit 
them for the conflict of wits in the matter of trade. With the progress of civiliza- 
tion and development we have ceased to think that superior physical strength gives 
the right of conquest and subjugation. We have graduated, in idea, out of the 
period of physical dominion. We remain, however, as yet in the period of intel- 
lectual conquest or plunder. It has not been questioned hitherto, as a general 
proposition, that the man who has superior intellectual endowments to others has a 
right resulting therefrom to profit thereby at the cost of others. In the extreme ap- 
plications of the admission only is the conclusion ever denied. In the whole field of 
what are denominated the legitimate operations of trade there is no other law 
recognized than the relative " smartness " or shrewdness of the parties, modified 
at most by the sentimental precept stated above. 

148. The intrinsic wrongfulness of the principal axioms and practice of existing 
commerce will appear to every reflecting mind from the preceding analysis. It 
will be proper, however, before dismissing the consideration of the Value Princi- 
ple, to trace out a little more in detail some of its specific results. 

The principle itself being essentially iniquitous, all the fruits of the principle 
are necessarily pernicious. 

Among the consequences which flow from it are the following : 

149. I. — It renders falsehood and hypocrisy a necessary concomitant of trade. 
Where the object is to buy cheap and sell dear, the parties find their interest in mu- 
tual deception. It is taught, in theory, that " honesty is the best policy," in the long 
run, but in practice the merchant discovers speedily that he must starve if he acts 
upon the precept — in the short run. Honesty — even as much honesty as can be 
arrived at — is not the best policy under the present unscientific system of com- 
merce, if by the best policy is meant that which tends to success in business. 
Professional merchants are sharp to distinguish their true policy for that end, and 
they do not find it in a full exposition of the truth. Intelligent merchants know 
the fact well, and conscientious merchants deplore it ; but they see no remedy. 
The theory of trade taught to innocent youths in the retired family, or the Sunday 
school, would ruin any clerk, if adhered to behind the counter, in a fortnight. 
Hence it is uniformly abandoned, and a new system of morality acquired the 
moment a practical application is to be made of the instruction. A frank disclo- 
sure, by the merchant, of all the secret advantages in his possession would destroy 
his reputation for sagacity as effectually as it would that of the gambler among 
his associates. Both commerce and gambling, as professions, are systems of 
strategy. It is the business of both parties to a trade to overreach each other, — 
a fact which finds its unblushing announcement in the maxim of the Common 
Law, Caveat emptor (let the purchaser take care). 



102 The Science of Society. 

150. II. — It makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Trade being, under this 
system, the intellectual correspondence to the occupation of the cut-throat or con- 
queror under the reign of physical force, — the stronger consequently accumulating 
more than his share at the cost of the destruction of the weaker, — the consequence 
of the principle is that the occupation of trade, for those who possess intellectual 
superiority, with other favorable conditions, enables them to accumulate more than 
their share of wealth, while it reduces those whose intellectual development — of 
the precise kind requisite for this species of contest — and whose material condi- 
tions are less favorable, to wretchedness and poverty. 

151. III. — It creates trade for trade's sake, and augments the number of non-pro- 
ducers, whose support is chargeable upon Labor. As trade, under the operation of 
this principle, offers the temptation of illicit gains and rapid wealth at the expense 
of others, it creates trade where there is no necessity for trade, — not as a benefi- 
cent interchange of commodities between producers and consumers, but as a means 
of speculation. Hence thousands are withdrawn from actual production and thrust 
unnecessarily into the business of exchanging, mutually devouring each other by 
competition, and drawing their subsistence and their wealth from the producing 
classes, without rendering any equivalent service. Hence the interminable range 
of intermediates between the producer and consumer, the total defeat of organiza- 
tion and economy in the distribution of products, and the intolerable burden of 
the unproductive classes upon labor, together with a host of the frightful results 
of pauperism and crime. 

152. IV. — It degrades the dignity of Labor. Inasmuch as trade, under the ope- 
ration of this principle, is more profitable, or at any rate is liable to be, promises 
to be, aud in a portion of cases is more profitable than productive labor, it follows 
that the road to wealth and social distinction lies in that direction. Hence "Com- 
merce is King." Hence, again, productive labor is depreciated and contemned. 
It holds the same relation to commerce in this age — under the reign of intellectual 
superiority — that commerce itself beld a few generations since — under the reign, 
of physical force — to military achievement, personal or hereditary. Thus the 
degradation of labor, and all the innumerable evils which follow in its train, in 
our existing civilization, find their efficient cause in this same false principle of 
exchanging products. The next stage of progress will be the inauguration of 
Equity, — equality in the results of every species of industry according to burdens 
and the consequent accession of labor to the highest rank of human estimation. 
Commerce will then sink to a mere brokerage, paid, like any other species of 
labor, according to its repugnance, as the army is now sinking to a mere police 
force. It will be reduced to the simplest and most direct methods of exchange, 
and made to be the merest servant of production, which will come, in its turn, to 
be regarded as conferring the only true patents of nobility. 

153. V. — It prevents the possibility of a scientific Adjustment of Supply to Demand, 



Cost the Limit of Price. 103 

It has been already shown that speculation is the cause why there has never been, 
and cannot now be, any scientific Adaptation of Supply to Demand. (35, 36.) It 
has also been partially shown, at various points, that speculation, or trading in 
chances and fluctuations in the market, has its root in the Value Principle, and 
that the Cost Principle extinguishes speculation. It will be proper, however, in 
this connection to define exactly the limits of speculation, and to point out more 
specifically how the Value Principle creates it, and how the Cost Principle ex- 
tinguishes it. 

151. By speculation is meant, in the ordinary language of trade, risky and un- 
usual enterprises entered upon for the sake of more than ordinary profits, and in 
that sense there is attached to it, among merchants, a slight shade of imputation 
of dishonesty or disreputable conduct. As we are seeking now, however, to employ 
language in an exact and scientific way, we must find a more precise definition of 
the term. The line between ordinary and more than ordinary profits is too vague 
for a scientific treatise. At one extremity of the long succession of chance-dealing 
and advantage-taking transactions stands gambling, which is denounced by the 
common verdict of mankind as merely a more specious form of robbery. It holds 
the same relation to robbery itself that duelling holds to murder. Where is the 
other end of this succession? At what point does a man begin to take an undue 
advantage of his fellow-man in a commercial transaction? It clearly appears, from 
all that has been shown, that he does so from the moment that he receives from 
him more than an exact equivalent of cost. But it is the constant endeavor of 
every trader, upon any other than the Cost Principle, to do that. The business of 
the merchant is profit-making. Profit signifies, etymologically, something made 
over and above, — that is, something beyond an equivalent, or, in its simplest ex- 
pression, something for nothing. 

155. It is clear, then, that there is no difference between profit-making in its 
mildest form, speculation in its opprobrious sense as the middle term, and gam- 
bling as the ultimate, except in degree. There is simply the bad gradation of rank 
which there is between the slaveholder, the driver on the slave plantation, and the 
slavedealer, or between the man of pleasure, the harlot, and the pimp. 

156. The philanthropy of the age is moving heaven and earth to the overthrow 
of the institution of slavery. But slavery has no scientific definition. It is thought 
to consist in the feature of chattelism, but an ingenious lawyer would run his pen 
through every statute upon slavery in existence, and expunge that fiction of the 
law, and yet leave slavery, for all practical purposes, precisely what it is now. It 
needs only to appropriate the services of the man by operation of law, instead of 
the man himself. The only distinction, then, left between his condition and that 
of the laborer who is robbed by the operation of a false commercial principle 
would be in the fact of the oppression being more tangible and undisguisedly 
degrading to his manhood. 



104 The Science of Society. 

157. If, in any transaction, I get from you some portion of your earnings with- 
out an equivalent, I begin to make you my slave, — to confiscate you to my uses ; if I 
get a larger portion of your services without an equivalent, I make you still further 
my slave; and, finally, if I obtain the whole of your services without an equiva- 
lent, — except the means of keeping you in working condition for my own sake, — 
I make you completely my slave. Slavery is merely one development of a general 
system of human oppression, for which we have no comprehensive term in English, 
but which the French Socialists denominate exploitation, — the abstraction, directly 
or indirectly, from the working classes of the fruits of their labor. In the case of 
the slave the instrument of that abstraction is force and legal enactments. In the 
case of the laborer, generally, it is speculation in the large sense, or 'profit-making. 
The slaveholder will be found, therefore, upon a scientific analysis, to hold the 
same relation to the trader which the freebooter holds to the blackleg. It is a 
question of taste which to admire most, the dare-devil boldness of the one, or the 
oily and intriguing propensities and performances of the other. 

158. But, you exclaim, why should I sell at cost? How am I to live as a mer- 
chant without profits? Never you mind. That is not the question now up. Per- 
haps the world has no particular use for you as a merchant. We will take care of 
all that by and by. Just now all that we are doing is to settle the nature of cer- 
tain principles. We shall want some merchants after all, and will pay them just 
what they are equitably entitled to. Do you want more? I shall now be under- 
stood when I say that the Cost Principle is merely the mutual abandonment, on all 
hands, of every species of profit-making, — each contenting himself with simple 
equivalents of cost in every exchange. It will be perceived, too, that the term 
speculation is used as synonymous with profit-making, when it is affirmed that that 
has hitherto defeated the Adaptation of Supply to Demand. With the cessation 
of profit-making there is no longer any temptation to conceal from each other any 
species of knowledge bearing upon that subject. At that point gazetteers, cata- 
logues, and statistical publications of all sorts spring into existence, giving exact 
information upon every point connected with the demand and supply of labor and 
commodities and the production and distribution of wealth. 

159. VI. — The Value Principle renders Competition destructive and desperate. The 
general subject of Competition will be more fully considered under another head. 
(202.) The consequence here stated follows in part as a necessary result of the 
preceding one, the want of Adaptation of Supply to Demand, and in part from the 
robbery of labor by the system now in operation. In the existing state of things 
there is an apparent surplus of both commodities and laborers, and the result is 
that men and women who are able to work, and willing to work, are not able to 
find employment. Hence, to be thrown out of occupation by competition is a 
frightful calamity, always implying distress, frequently destitution and wretched- 
ness, and sometimes absolute starvation, while the fear of such a catastrophe is a 



Cost the Limit of Price. 105 

•lemon which haunts continually the imagination of the workingman, afflicting 
him with a misery hardly less real than the occurrence of the calamity itself. It is 
the tendency and direct effect of competition to throw out the inferior workman 
from every occupation, and to supply his place by the superior workman in that 
particular branch of industry. This tendency, direful as its consequences are in 
the existing state of things, is nevertheless a right tendency, and society ought to 
be organized upon such principles that it should have full play — to an extent far 
beyond what it now has — with no other than beneficent results to all. It is per- 
fectly right that the inferior workman should be thrown out of any employment 
to make room for the superior workman in that employment. To retain the infe- 
rior workman in any occupation, while there is in the whole world a superior 
workman for that occupation, who can do the same work at less cost, and therefore 
upon the Cost Principle at a less price, is bad economy of means, — as bad as it is 
to employ an inferior machine or process after a superior machine or process has 
been discovered, — and any system or set of relations which works out bad results 
from such appropriate substitution of the superior for the inferior instrument 
must be itself essentially bad. 

160. It is now calamitous for any person to be thrown out of his particular oc- 
cupation for several reasons, all of which either relate directly to the operations of 
the Value Principle, or indirectly to it, through the general want of the Adaptation 
of Supply to Demand, which is occasioned by it. 

161. The principal of these are: 1. Because when one avenue to industry is 
closed another is not opened, as would be the case if supply and demand were accu- 
rately adjusted; and hence apparently there is not enough labor for all. In the 
existing order, or rather disorder of commerce, there is what is called over-produc- 
tion. More of a given article seems to be produced than is wanted, which is shown 
by the fact that it cannot be disposed of in the market at any price. With all the 
irregularities of existing commerce this seldom happens. The evil does not gene- 
rally go beyond the reduction of price. When it does, it is because there is now 
no provisory means of adjusting supply and demand. The producer cannot know 
beforehand, for example, precisely how many persons are engaged in rearing the 
particular kind of fruit which he cultivates, what number of trees they have, the 
amount of fruit annually consumed in the city where they find their market, etc. 
But although the workings of the law of supply and demand are not pointed out 
to him beforehand, the law is sure to work, nevertheless. It is inflexible as the 
law of the Medes and Persians. It will punish the error, although it did not pre- 
vent it. The over-supply may happen one year, but it will not happen the second 
and the third years. The persons employed in that kind of production will find 
their way into other pursuits. In a country which should prohibit all change of 
pursuits, that remedy would not exist. The evil would have to go on, or be re- 
medied by the starvation of the producer of the given article. In America, where 



10(> The Science of Society. 

the avenues to every pursuit are more open than elsewhere, the remedy is more 
speedy than elsewhere. Under the reign of Equity, the evil would not exist, be- 
cause there would be a provisory adjustment of the supply to the demand, and, if it did 
occur, the remedy would be immediate, because all avenues to all pursuits would 
be open to all by means of that adjustment, and the general preparedness of all to 
change rapidly their pursuits, together with the general prevalence of cooperation. 
(163.) 

Still there is, in the nature of things, and apart from the workings of any parti- 
cular system, a limit to the demand for every article. When that demand is sup- 
plied, must not the demand for labor cease? Certainly, for the production of 
more of that particular article. We have seen, however, that that labor will go 
into different avenues, — that is, into the production of other articles. If the ques- 
tion is, whether all the wants of all mankind will not be so completely supplied 
that there will be no occasion for further labor, the answer is three-fold. First, so 
soon as the labor ceased, consumption would reproduce the wants and the demand. 
Secondly, if this were partially so, it would only give additional leisure for mental 
improvement and other means of enjoyment to all mankind by emancipating them 
so far from the necessity of labor. Thirdly, the wants of human beings are infi- 
nite. As the lower wants are supplied higher wants are developed. So soon as 
men and women have ordinary food, clothing, and shelter, they demand luxuries, 
and these of a higher and still higher class. The gratification of every taste creates 
a new demand. It is impossible, therefore, that the demand for human labor, and 
for all the labor which can be given, should ever cease. Hence there is no such 
thing possible as a real over-stocking of the world with labor, or the products of 
labor. There is no such thing possible as a real dearth of labor to be performed. 
With all the avenues continually open, there will then always be a demand for all 
the labor that any body is ready to perform, even down to the inferior and lowest 
grades of skill. It will be still more clearly shown, in treating of the remaining 
results of the Cost Principle, how, under the true system, the avenues to every pur- 
suit will be open to every individual at all times without artificial obstacles, and 
how there will be at all times labor enough for all. (213.) 

162. 2. Because, when avenues are open to new pursuits, men and women are not 
now prepared to avail themselves of them. This unpreparedness results from their 
wretchedly cramped and insufficient industrial education. This results again from 
speculation. Men now strive, on all hands, to monopolize those occupations which 
are most profitable, and hence to exclude others from acquiring the necessary know- 
ledge to enable them to enter them. Hence there results from the value or profit- 
making principle a general embargo on knowledge, and the reduction of all classes 
to narrowness of information and general ignorance. Information in any trade or 
pursuit is made a means of speculation. Hence the barbarous system of seven- 
years' apprenticeships, and other similar absurdities. Hence, when men and 



Cost the Limit of Price. 107 

women are thrown out of any particular occupation to which they have been bred 
and moulded, they are fitted for nothing but pauperism. Under the operation of 
the Cost Principle all this will be reversed. Every member of the community will 
be a man or a woman, competent to do various things, — not a mere appendage to a 
trade, carrying from the cradle to the grave the badge of servitude in the degrading 
appellation of tailor, weaver, shoemaker, joiner, and the like. Now, shops are 
fenced in, locked and bolted, to keep out intruders and shut up the information 
contained in them. Trades are hedged in by the absurd and barbarous system 
based on Value. Men who have knowledge of any kind hoard it. They look, un- 
naturally, upon those who would learn of them as if they were enemies. As the 
result, the avenues to different occupations are everywhere obstructed by artificial 
obstacles. Then information of all sorts will be freely given to all. Suggestions 
will be made on all hands, aiding every one to enter that career in which he can 
most benefit, not himself only, but the whole public. In a word, all the avenues 
to every occupation will be thrown completely open to all, and all knowledge be 
freely furnished to all at the mere cost of the labor of communicating it, measured, 
like any labor, by its repugnance only. 

163. VIT. — The Value Principle renders the invention of new machinery a wide- 
spread calamity, instead of a universal blessing. The hostility so generally felt by 
laboring men to new inventions is not without reason. It is certainly true that 
machinery is a great benefit to mankind at large, and that in the aggregate and in 
the long run it improves the condition even of laboring men as a class. But it is 
equally true, on the other hand, that every invention of a labor-saving process is, 
under the present arrangements of society, an immediate individual misfortune, 
and frequently nothing less than ruin and starvation to a large number of indivi- 
duals of that class. This result comes from the causes stated above, which render 
it impossible for the laborer to pass rapidly and harmoniously from one occupation 
to another, and from the monopoly of the immediate benefits of the saving secured 
by the machine, by capital, and all these again from profit-making, or the opera- 
tion of the Value Principle. It is the same with competition and machinery. 
Competition, even in the present order of things, is productive of far more good 
than evil, looking to the aggregate and the long run, while it is ruinous and de- 
structive immediately and individually. Under the new order both will become 
purely harmonic and beneficent. (208, 243.) 

164. This catalogue of the deleterious results of the false principle of trade 
might and should be extended, and the details expanded beyond what the limits 
of this work will allow. The reader will add, for himself, the monopolizing of na- 
tural wealth, the perversion of skill to the shamming or adulteration of every 
species of commodity, the waste of time and exertion in detecting and defeating 
frauds and cheats, the general want of economy in the production of wealth, the 
cost of convicting and punishing criminals, constructing poor-houses and prisons, 
etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. 



108 The Science of Society. 

It must suffice here to affirm that out of these several consequences of the opera- 
tion of the Value Principle results that complicated system of injustice, discord, 
distrust, and repulsion which have usurped the place of the spirit of peace, order, 
and social harmony, and which characterizes, in the most eminent degree, in the 
midst of their success, the most commercial and prosperous nations. The compa- 
rison of the present is not to be instituted however, mainly, with any condition of 
society prior to the commercial age, since different manifestations of the want of 
equity have characterized them also. The exhibition of relations of truth in 
human intercourse could not precede the discovery of the principles according to 
which such relations must be adjusted. 

165. The operation of the Cost Principle reverses every one of the consequences 
which I have pointed out or intimated as the legitimate fruits of the principle 
which now governs the property relations of mankind. In the next chapter we 
shall return .to the consideration of the results of the true principle. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 109 



CHAPTER V. 

MENIAL LABOR RAISED IN PRICE. 

166. The next result of the Cost Principle is one which is not less diverse from 
the operations of existing commerce or society, although its essential justice may 
to many minds be more obvious, — namely, that according to it the more ordinary 
and menial kinds of labor will be usually paid best. This result follows from the fact 
that all pursuits are paid according to their repugnance, and there is less in the 
inferior grades of labor to commend them to the taste and render them attractive. 
This result is qualified by the statement that such labor is usually paid best, be- 
cause it is not always so. Severe mental labor may be more toilsome, painful, and 
repugnant than any corporeal labor whatever, and consequently cost more. This 
point will be more fully stated hereafter, in referring to the tax of different occu- 
pations upon different faculties. Besides, very little judgment can be formed from 
the present ideas upon the subject as to what kinds of labor will be regarded, un- 
der the operation of true principles, as inferior to, or more menial than others. 

167. It is certain that every species of industry will be relatively very much 
elevated by the mere fact of being appropriately rewarded, and still more so by the 
consequent prevalence of more rational notions in relation to the dignity of labor. 
The principle here asserted merely amounts to this, — that whatever kinds of la- 
bor actually have in them the greatest amount of drudgery, from any cause, even 
from the whims and prejudices of society against them, and which are therefore 
most repugnant, will be best paid. The contrary is true now. Such labors are 
the most scantily paid. Consequently the more work or burden there is in any 
occupation, the less pay. There is such an obvious want of equity in this that the 
mere statement of the fact condemns it. Yet the common associations and habits 
of thought are so completely overturned by the idea of boot-blacking, street-clean- 
ing, washing, scrubbing, etc., being paid higher prices than painting, sculpture, 
forensic oratory, and the largest commercial transactions, as they might, and pro- 
bably would be, under the application of repugnance or cost as the measure of 
price, that the mind hesitates to admit the conclusion that such is the dictate of 
simple Equity. The principle of Equity is, nevertheless, clear and self-evident; 
and while the principle is admitted, the conclusion is inevitable. 

168. The first resort of an illogical and determined opposition to this conclusion 
is to fly off from the principle to the consequences of the conclusion upon the con- 
dition and interests of society. These, as they address themselves to the mind of 



110 The Science of Society. 

a superficial observer, are repugnant, and even disastrous to the general good. A 
closer inspection, however, and especially a more comprehensive conception of all 
the changed conditions of society which will grow out of the operation of the Cost 
Principle, will reverse that opinion, and furnish an illustration of the fact that a 
true principle may always be trusted to work out true and harmonious results. 
The objections deduced from these supposed consequences require, however, to be: 
noticed. 

169. These objections are chiefly the following : It is objected, in the first place, 
that the effect of this system of remuneration would be to banish refinement, by 
placing those persons having less elevated tastes in the possession of the greater 
wealth, and those having more elevated tastes in the possession of less. 

This is substantially the same objection which is urged by aristocracies gene- 
rally against educating and improving the condition of the common people. It 
makes the assumption that the whole people are not susceptible of refinement, 
which is assuming too much. The objection draws its force chiefly from the exist- 
ing state of society, the prevailing great inequalities in the distribution of wealth, 
and the general degradation of the masses consequent thereon. The result of the 
operation of the Cost Principle, or of the reign of Equity, will be an immense aug- 
mentation of the aggregate of wealth, and a far greater approach to equality in its 
distribution. It will be, in fact, the abolition of poverty, and the installation of 
general abundance and security of condition. The particular modes in which 
these results will be attained will be referred to under other heads. 

170. Consequently, in the state of society growing legitimately out of the ope- 
ration of Equity, refinement, so far as that depends on the jwssession of wealth, 
will be, so to speak, the inheritance of all, and any objection, to be valid, should 
be taken within the circle of the new principles, — not drawn from a system of so- 
ciety quite alien to them. 

171. Various calculations, and some actual experiments, go to establish the po- 
sition that, if the laborer enjoyed the full results of his own labor in immediate 
products or equivalents of cost, two hours of labor a day would be ample to supply 
the ordinary wants of the individual, — that is, to bring his condition up to the 
average standard of comfort, — even without the benefits of labor-saving machinery 
or the economies of the large scale. 'With those extraordinary benefits the time 
necessary for such a result will be very much reduced; if it would not seem extra- 
vagant, I should say to one half hour's labor a day, — such being the nearest result 
at which calculation can arrive from such data as can now be obtained. The re- 
maining time of the Individual would then be at his disposition for providing a 
higher grade of luxury, for mental improvement and amusement, and for laying 
up accumulations of wealth as a provision for sickness, old age, the indulgence of 
benevolence, taste, etc. Of course all calculations of this sort must be merely ap- 
proximative. The terms used are too indefinite to render them more than that, 



Cost the Limit of Price. Ill 

even if the degree of saving, by a true arrangement of the production and distri- 
bution of wealth, could be rendered definite, comfort, luxury, etc., being always, 
in a great measure, relative to the individual. The estimate here stated, however, 
is the result of extensive investigations, made by different individuals, and in dif- 
ferent countries, and of considerable actual experiment, the particulars of which 
will be stated elsewhere, and, as an approximation, it is believed that it is not very 
far from correct. The reason why this two hours of labor is now augmented to 
ten, twelve, fourteen, and even sixteen hours for those who labor, and even then 
without resulting in ordinary comfort, is of the same kind as those which have 
already been stated why others cannot procure labor at all, and such as have been 
shown to be the legitimate results of the Value Principle. It is, in one word, be- 
cause the state of society begotten of that principle is, as has been affirmed, a state 
of latent but universal war, and because all war is an exhausting drain upon peace- 
ful industry. The men and women who work have now to support, ordinarily, 
not one individual each, but many, including the wealthy and speculating classes, 
the paupers, those who are thrown temporarily out of labor, the armies and navies, 
the officials, and, worse than all, those whose labor is now misapplied and wasted 
through the general antagonism and conflict of interests. Let any thinking person 
take passage, for example, upon a steamboat, and find himself plied by a dozen or 
twenty newsboys, each urging him to the purchase of the same newspapers; let 
him reflect that all the passengers present might have been as well served by one 
boy, and that this waste of human exertion is merely one sample out of thousands 
of a general or pervading system of the bestowment of labor to no useful purpose. 
172. Again, the possession of wealth is only one means of refinement, or rather 
of the true development of the human being. Labor in itself is just as essential to 
that development as wealth. Labor without wealth, as its legitimate end and con- 
sequence, terminates in coarseness, vulgarity, and degradation. Wealth without 
labor, as the legitimate necessity and condition of its attainment, ends, on the 
other hand, in luxuriousness and effeminacy. The first is the condition of the 
ever-toiling and poverty-stricken masses in our actual civilization ; the last is the 
hardly more fortunate condition of the rich. Labor is first degraded by being de- 
prived of its reward, and, being degraded, the wealthy, who are enabled by their 
riches to avoid it, are repelled, even when their tastes would incline them to its per- 
formance. The rich suffer, therefore, from ennui, gout, and dyspepsia, while the 
poor suffer from fatigue, deformity, and starvation. The refinement toward which 
wealth conduces in existing society is not, then, genuine development. The dandy 
h nc mors refined, in any commendable sense of the term, than the boor. Wealth 
may coexist with inbred and excessive vulgarity. The fact is patent to all, but 
the proof of it could nowhere be more obvious than in the very objection I am an- 
swering. The absence of true refinement and gentility is in no manner so com- 
pletely demonstrated as by selfish and wanton encroachments upon the rights of 



112 The Science of Society. 

others, and no encroachment can be conceived more selfish and wanton than that 
of demanding that others shall work without compensation to maintain our 

gentility. 

173. Refinement sits most gracefully upon those who have the most thorough 
physical development and training. The highest exhibit of the real gentleman 
can no more be produced without labor than that of the scholar without study. 
There is no more a royal road to true refinement than there is to mathematics. 
The experiment has been tried in either case a thousand times, of jumping the 
primary and intermediate steps, and the product has been in one event the fop, 
and in the other the pedant. 

Refinement is, so to speak, a luxury to be indulged in after the necessaries of 
life are provided. Those necessaries consist of stamina of body and mind, which 
are only wrought out of mental and corporeal exercise. Mere refinement sought 
from the beginning, with no admixture of hardship, emasculates the man, and 
ends disastrously for the individual and the race. It is indispensable, therefore, 
to the true education and integral development of both the individual and the race 
that every person shall take upon himself or herself a due proportion of the com- 
mon burden of mankind. If it were possible for any one individual to labor, for 
his whole life, at pursuits which were purely attractive and delightful, it is ques- 
tionable whether even that would not mollify his character to the point of effemi- 
nacy, — whether absolute difficulties and repugnances to be overcome are not 
essential to a right education of a human being in every condition of his existence. 
The Cost Principle forces a compliance with what philosophy thus demonstrates 
to be the unavoidable condition of human development and genuine refinement. 
It removes the possibility of one person's living in indolence off the exertions of 
others. It administers labor as the inevitable prior condition of indulging in re- 
finement, for which it furnishes the means and prepares the way. This objection, 
drawn from the consequences of the principle upon the well-being of society, is 
therefore destitute of validity. The balance of advantage predominates immensely 
in the opposite scale. The result which the principle works out is the elevation 
and genuine refinement of the whole race, instead of brutifying the vast majority 
of mankind and emasculating the rest. 

174. The second objection is that this method of remuneration depresses the 
condition of genius, and affords no means of obtaining a livelihood, and of making 
accumulations, to those who pursue purely attractive occupations. (99.) 

This objection is, in part, answered in the same manner as the preceding. 
Genius, as well as refinement, has its basis in healthful physical conditions, such 
as result from a due amount of labor and struggle with mental and corporeal 
difficulties. Complete relief from all necessity for exertion is by no means a favor- 
able state for the development of genius, or its maintenance in activity. The poet 
who works three hours a day at some occupation which is actual work will be a 



Cost the Limit of Price. 113 

better poet than the same man if he should devote himself exclusively to his fa- 
vorite literary pursuit. With the knowledge of physiological laws now prevalent, 
it cannot be necessary to enlarge upon a statement so well authenticated, both by 
science and experience. Less than that amount of labor, in true industrial rela- 
tions, will furnish the means of existence and comfort. Hence, under the operation 
of these principles, genius has its own destiny in its own hands. 

175. The man of genius who should devote himself exclusively, except so far 
as he must labor to provide himself the means of living, to that which to him was 
purely attractive and delightful, would of course not accumulate, as the price of his 
exertions, that kind of reward which appropriately belongs to exertions of a different 
kind, — namely, to such as tend directly to the production of wealth. If he seeks 
his own gratification solely in this pursuit, he finds his reward in the pursuit itself. 
Probably, however, there is no species of occupation which, when continuously 
followed, is purely delightful. If the artist disposes of the products of his genius 
at all, he is entitled to demand a price for them according to the degree of cost or 
sacrifice they have occasioned him, — less in proportion to the degree to which he 
has pursued the occupation from pure delight. The correctness of this principle 
is now tacitly admitted in the case of the amateur, who does not charge for his 
works, because he performed them for his own gratification. So soon, however, as 
the artist, in any department of art, becomes professional, and exercises his profes- 
sion for the pleasure and gratification of the public, he is forced to subordinate 
his own gratification, more or less, to that of those whom he attempts to propitiate, 
which, with the temperament usually belonging to that class of persons, is extremely 
irksome. In proportion to this irksomeness comes an augmentation of price. To 
be obliged to perform at stated times, to conform his own tastes to the demands 
of his employers or patrons, and the like, — all the. sacrifice thus imposed enters 
legitimately into the estimate of price. It may be, therefore, that art pursued as 
a profession may be as lucrative, in a mere commercial point of view, as any other 
pursuit. 

176. Ordinarily, however, there is a repugnance with the genuine artist to 
pursuing art as a profession at all. He desires ardently to pay his devotions at the 
shrine of his favorite divinity solely for her own sake. He feels that there is some- 
thing like degradation in intermingling with his worship any mercenary motive 
whatever. For the gratification of this refined sentiment, how superior woidd his 
condition be, if, by expending a few hours of his time at some productive industry, 
which the arrangements of society placed always at his disposal, he could procure 
an assured subsistence, and that grade of comfort and elegance to which his tastes 
might incline him ! There can be nothing in the vagrant and precarious condition 
of the devotees of art, in our existing society, to be viewed as a model, which it 
would be dangerous to deviate from. 

177. The objection which we are now considering has been, however, already 



114 The Science of Society. 

answered in a manner more satisfactory, perhaps, to those whose aspirations for 
the artist are more luxurious, in the chapter on Natural Wealth, under which head 
talent, natural skill, or genius is included. (87.) It was there shown that the 
subject treated of in this whole work is merely price, in its rigid sense as a remu- 
neration for burden assumed, the only remuneration which the performer of any 
labor can with propriety demand; but it is not for that reason the only remunera- 
tion which he may with propriety receive, if more is rendered as a free tribute for 
pleasure conferred, of which the party served must be the sole judge. (93.) 
Hence, as the business of the artist and the genius is to confer the purer and more 
elevated kinds of pleasure, the whole field is open to him to compel by pure at- 
traction as liberal a tribute as he may, provided always no other force is employed. 
The point of honor would concur with equity in limiting him in his demand to the 
mere amount of burden assumed, as if he were the most menial laborer, — an 
amount which delicacy and politeness toward those whom he served would lead 
him rather to under than over estimate. On the other hand, the same point of 
honor would leave to them the estimate of the pleasure conferred, while delicacy 
and politeness on their part would in turn prompt them to magnify rather than 
diminish the obligation, and bespeak from them an appreciative and indulgent 
spirit. In this manner the intercourse of the artist, the genius, the discoverer, or 
other supereminent public benefactor with the public would be raised to a natural 
and refined interchange of courtesies, instead of a disgraceful scramble about pri- 
ority of rights, or the price of tickets. 

178. In like manner there is nothing in the Cost Principle to prevent the most 
liberal contributions, on all hands, toward aiding inventors in carrying on their 
experiments before . success has crowned their exertions, and the most liberal tes- 
timonials of the public appreciation of those exertions after success is achieved. 

179. The third objection to the Cost Principle, drawn from its consequences 
upon the interests and conditions of society, is that it does not provide for the 
performance of every useful function in the community. More specifically stated, 
the objection is this: Labor is paid according to its repugnance; there are some 
kinds of labor which are not repugnant at all, but which, on the other hand, are 
purely pleasurable, and which consequently would bear no price, or receive no 
remuneration ; but the performance of these kinds of labor is necessary to the well- 
being of society, and, in order that they be performed, those who perform them 
must be sustained; consequently they must have a price for their labor. The Cost 
Principle denies a price, therefore, at the same time that the well-being of society 
demands one. 

180. This objection assumes that the labor in question will not be performed 
unless it bears a price, while it assumes at the same time that it is a pure pleasure 
to perform it. It assigns as the reason why it will not be performed, that the la- 
borers performing it must be maintained while engaged in its performance. To 



Cost the Limit of Price. 115 

assume this is iu effect to assume that iu the state of societywhich will result from 
these principles people will not have leisure to pursue their pleasure for pleasure's 
sake, and that they will be obliged to devote the whole of their time to occupations 
going toward furnishing them the means of subsistence. This is again assuming 
too much. Such assumptions are based upon the existing state of things, and not 
upon any such as could exist under the reign of Universal Equity. The very end 
and purpose of all radical social reform is a state of society which shall relieve 
every individual from subjugation to the necessity of continuous and repugnant 
labor, and furnish him the leisure and ability to pursue his own pleasurable occu- 
pations at his own option. It is claimed for the Cost Principle that, taken in con- 
junction with the doctrine of Individuality and the Sovereignty of the Individual, 
it works out a state of society in which that leisure and ability would exist. The 
real question, then, is whether it does so or not. If it does, then the objection falls. 
It is answered by the statements that all purely pleasurable occupations will be 
filled by such persons as have leisure, or by all persons at such times as they have 
leisure. Being pleasurable, they require no inducement in the form of price. 
Whether the operation of the Cost Principle is adequate to the production of 
general wealth, and the consequent prevalence of leisure and freedom of choice in 
regard to occupation, depends upon the correctness of the whole train of proposi- 
tions which have been, and which are to be made upon the subject. 

181. The next objection drawn from the operation of the Cost Principle is that 
it makes no provision for the maintenance of the poor and the unfortunate, — that, 
although it secui-es exact justice, it has in it no provisions for benevolence. 

■ It has been shown that, in order that benevolence be rightly appreciated and ac- 
cepted as such, and beget benevolence in turn, it is essential that equity should 
first have been done. Mutual benevolence can only exist after all the requirements 
of equity have been complied with, and that can only be by first knowing what the 
requirements of equity really are ; where, in other words, the relations of equity or 
justice cease, and those of benevolence begin. 

182. It is the essential element of benevolence that it be perfectly voluntary. 
If it is exercised in obedience to a demand, it is no longer benevolence. Apply 
these principles to the question of public or private charity. If justice were done 
to all classes and all individuals in society; if, in other words, the whole products 
of the labor of each were secured to him for his own enjoyment, — the occasion for 
charity, as it is now administered, would be almost wholly removed. Pauperism, 
in any broad sense, would be extinguished. Poverty would, so to speak, be abol- 
ished, except in the very rare instances of absolute disability, from disease or 
accident overtaking persons for whom no prior provision had been made either by 
their own accumulations or those of their ancestors or deceased friends. Pauper- 
ism, with such rare exceptions, is purely the growth of the existing system of com- 
mercial exchanges, tending continually, as has been shown, to make the rich richer 
and the poor pQorer. 



116 The Science of Society. 

183. With regard, then, to the few cases of disability, coupled with destitution, 
which may always continue to occur, it is obvious that that principle of science 
which intervenes to regulate the equitable exchange of products has no application 
whatever where there are no products to exchange. Equity is then out of the 
question. Equivalents cannot be rendered because there is nothing on the one side 
to render. Benevolence comes then fairly in play. In the same manner as the 
sentiment of justice is offended by the pretence of giving as charity what is felt to 
be due as a right, so, on the other hand, the sentiment of benevolence is offended 
by a claim as a matter of right to that which should be voluntarily bestowed, if at 
all. I have observed elsewhere that Rowland Hill would never have received the 
magnificent testimonial bestowed upon him by the English people, if he had seen 
fit to prefer a claim to it as the price of his services. Benevolence is conciliated, 
therefore, the moment that all claim is abandoned, and claims having no basis in 
right are abandoned immediately whenever there is an exact knowledge of the 
limits of equity. In this manner the Cost Principle, while it does not profess to 
be benevolent, serves, nevertheless, as an inspirer and regulator of benevolence it- 
self. While justice is not benevolence, therefore, the foundations of benevolence 
are still laid in justice. 

184. In a condition of society, then, in which Equity shall first have been 
secured to all, benevolence, whenever the occasion shall arise, will flow forth from 
every heart with unmeasured abundance. The disabled and unfortunate will be 
the pets and spoiled children of the community. It is a mistake in the philosophy 
of mind to suppose that there is naturally any sense of degradation from being the 
object of real charity. There never is any repugnance on the part of any one to 
being the recipient of genuine benevolence. The tenant of the poor-house in our 
pauper-ridden civilization is degraded and made sensible of his degradation by the 
malevolence, never by the benevolent sentiment, of society toward him. He is 
first hated because injustice has been done him, and then hated because he is a 
burden to society. 

185. This is the true solution of the question of charity. So long as persons 
exist who are unable to support themselves from the products of their own labor, 
they must be maintained by the labor of other persons, without rendering any 
equivalent, and to be so maintained is to depend upon charity. There is no es- 
caping from this necessity. Partnership or associative arrangements, or the theory 
of Communism, may disguise the fact, but the fact continues to exist, nevertheless. 
The remedy for the disagreeable features of charity is not to be sought by the im- 
possible means of removing the fact, but by improving the general condition of so- 
ciety to the point where the demands for charity shall be so rare, and the general 
abundance of means so great, that there will be strife for the enjoyment of oppor- 
tunities to gratify the benevolent sentiment. The relation of donor and benefi- 
ciary will then be alike agreeable and honorable to both. There is nothing, 



Cost the Limit of Price. 117 

however, in the Cost Principle to prevent, but every thing to encourage and require, 
the extension of the principle of insurance to every thing to which it is applicable. 
Risk enters into cost, and the calculations of risk, as in the case of tables of lon- 
gevity and the like, reduce that element to measurement, and render it as easy of 
calculation as any other element. Hence, parties who earn a surplus at any period 
of their lives can always insure permanent provision for the future. With refer- 
ence to the very small number of those who, from the causes mentioned, may never 
be able to do that, the observations made above hold good. They must be the ob- 
jects of the benevolent regards of the community, and not rely upon any law regu- 
lating equivalents of which they have none to give. Benevolence, being purely 
voluntary and illimitable, cannot be measured nor prescribed for. Any attempt 
to organize it, or dictate its action, is, therefore, as much out of place as it would 
be to regulate politeness by legislation. First do justice and extinguish the 
pauperism, crime, and disease which grow out of relations of injustice, and cease 
to fear that the spontaneous benevolence of humanity will not be amply adequate 
to provide for the sparsedly scattered instances of misfortune which may ever re- 
main as an incentive to the healthy action of that affection. 

186. There is a subtle objection sometimes urged against the whole doctrine of 
attractive industry, or, in other words, against the propriety of every individual 
being employed in that way in which his tastes incline him to act, and for which 
his natural gifts particularly qualify him. It is said that genius or superior natu- 
ral endowment in any direction is always, in some sense, a diseased or abnormal 
condition of the man; that the true type of humanity is the exact equilibrium of 
all the faculties, and a consequent equal capacity for every species of performance ; 
that the exercise of any faculty augments its power, and hence that, if those fac- 
ulties which are in excess are chiefly exercised, the deflection from the true direc- 
tion of integral individual development is continually rendered greater and greater. 
Hence the curious result, in reasoning, is arrived at that every individual should be 
constantly or chiefly engaged at those occupations for which he has least natural 
endowment, and which are least agreeable, or, in other words, the most repugnant, 
to him. 

187. This is an extreme and erroneous presentation of a principle of psychology 
and physiology; but, having a coloring of truth, it requires to be carefully con- 
sidered and distinguished. The assumption here made is that there is one given 
standard of perfection for universal manhood, which is the exact equilibrium of all 
the faculties. It is obvious that, according to this theory, the perfection of the 
race would be the reduction of all men to the common standard, until every indi- 
vidual would be merely the monotonous repetition of every other. It is not so 
clear, under this hypothesis, why the Almighty should not have created one big 
man instead of so many little ones. Since economy of means is one of His striking 
characteristics, as exhibited everywhere in nature, the probabilities would cer- 



118 The Science of Society. 

tainly be in favor of such a policy. Slight reflection, however, will show that this 

" Simplistic Unity " is no part of the scheme of creation. " Universal Variety in 
Unity " is the law of the universe. The theoretical perfection of an exact equi- 
librium of faculties has no example in nature. It is an ideal point around which 
all individual organizations rotate in orbits more or less eccentric, all of them, how- 
ever, when not arbitrarily interfered with, unapproachably distinct from every 
other, and hence positively incapable of collision. Individuality is infinite and 
universal. It cannot be extinguished, and, if it could, the result would be to re- 
duce the universe to zero. 

188. On the other hand it is undoubtedly true that, where some single faculty 
shows itself in any extraordinary degree of activity and power, there is a certain 
derangement of the whole system, growing out of, or conducing to, what may be 
regarded as disease. Genius verges upon insanity. Too great a departure from 
the ideal equilibrium of powers is unwholesome and dangerous to the physical, in- 
tellectual, and moral nature. Hence the arbitrary and infinitesimal division of 
labor without variety, of which our existing civilization boasts, is a wretched per- 
version of the powers of the individual. It pushes out and develops some one 
faculty to the neglect and destruction of all others, sinking the manhood of the 
man in the skill of the artisan. Every other faculty is suffered to wither and die. 
The individual, instead of being integrally developed, is distorted. Men and 
women are sacrificed and subordinated by this means to Skill, as they are through 
Political Economy to Wealth, through political organizations to Government, and 
through the church to ritual observances. Thus Utility, Enjoyment, Social Order, 
and Religion are overlaid and smothered by the very arrangements which are in- 
stituted professedly to secure those ends. A person who has been forced into the 
performance of some one function only during life is necessarily the helpless play- 
thing of circumstances. He is rendered wholly imbecile for all else. All the 
higher purposes of his being are defeated by an insane and incessant devotion to 
some isolated fag-end of human affairs. 

189. Hence it follows that true development is not to be found in either ex- 
treme. In medio tutissimus ibis. That man may be said to be best educated who 
has a general acquaintance with the largest scope of subjects, coupled with a par- 
ticular and specific knowledge of some one, two, three, or more pursuits to which 
he chiefly dedicates his labors. In the beginning of a reform movement, while the 
circle is small, the most useful men of all are those who are spoken of disparag- 
ingly, in existing society, as " Jaeks-at-all-trades," — those who can turn themselves 
the most readily from one occupation to another. In this respect the American 
character is superior to that of all other people. The largest development of the 
Individual tends in that direction. With the increase of the circle, and greater 
general security of condition, a more exclusive or one-sided class of talent will find 
its position, and a greater perfection of details — a higher composite perfection of 



Cost the Limit of Price. 119 

Society — will then be achieved. The highest development of society demands the 
existence and cooperation of both classes. The true equilibrium is that the versa- 
tile man shall not go to the extreme of having neither preferences nor excellences 
in his performance, nor the devotee to a particular function to that of having no 
tastes or qualifications for any other. The point now to be observed is that Na- 
ture rarely, if ever, pushes things to either one or the other of these extremes. 
There is no man who is by nature totally indifferent as to what he will do, nor any 
so born to a single attraction that he never develops tastes for any other, while 
some have greater diversity, and some greater particularity of tastes, by natural 
organization. Hence all that is necessary in order to secure the right distribution 
of functions is that Nature be left wholly unembarrassed, — that no individual be 
driven or induced by the arrangements of society, such as inordinate profits, dis- 
proportionate honors, or poverty, into, or detained in, occupations discordant with 
his individual preferences or desires, on the one hand, and that those natural pre- 
ferences or desires be not overstimulated by the same or a different class of in- 
fluences, on the other. To secure that condition of things there must be an equilibrium 
between attractions and rewards. This is precisely what is effected by the adoption 
of cost as the limit of price. The greater the attraction for a particular occupation 
the less the price ; consequently, while it is placed within the power of every one 
to follow his attractions so far as he may choose to do so at his own cost, — that is, 
by sacrificing the larger gains of more repugnant industry, — still, on the other 
hand, he is constantly appealed to by his cupidity, — that is, by another class of 
wants, — to compete with others in various kinds of labor more burdensome to him, 
and thereby to develop and keep in healthy exercise those faculties with which he 
is less liberally endowed by nature. 

190. Again, if any individual is imbued with the theory that to indulge in the 
exercise of his best developed faculties is injurious to his health, moral attributes, 
or reasoning powers, by throwing him out of the ideal perfection of his nature, 
then that supposed injury to his nature becomes immediately, with him, an item 
of cost, raises the price of his labor in that function, throws him out of it by the 
competition of others having similar abilities with a different appreciation of the 
wear and tear of employing them, and places him in the performance of something 
which will call into play those faculties which he deems deficient and wishes to 
cultivate. The principle is adequate, therefore, to every emergency. But as we 
have seen already that the theory itself is only rational as a protest against an ex- 
treme use of the superior faculties, there is no doubt that the balance of natural 
attractions will, in the great majority of cases, determine the general direction of 
industry, and the more so as the increased abundance of wealth renders price a less 
important consideration. The true equilibrium will then be preserved, however, 
by an augmented scope of attractions, which we have seen is the type of individual 
development. That the conditions of attractive industry are supplied by the Cost 



120 The Science of Society. 

Principle will be more fully shown in. the following chapter, in which results will 
be partially sketched which are more directly in harmony with the flattering anti- 
cipations of those reformers who are most advanced, ideally. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 121 



CHAPTER VI. 

ATTRACTIVE INDUSTRY, CO-OPERATION, AND THE ECONOMIES. 

191. We have now arrived at a point from which we are prepared to discover 
and appreciate the higher results of the Cost Principle. The view, however, which 
I shall but slightly open, of the grand and enchanting prospects foreshadowed for 
the race by so simple a means as the mere enactment of justice in the daily trans- 
actions of man with man will be left intentionally incomplete. The mass of man- 
kind have but little toleration for Utopias. Those who are ready to believe in 
them, and who simply demand, as the basis of their faith, a more solid foundation 
than airy fancies, will trace, it is hoped, for themselves, the outlines of the future, 
upon slight hints drawn from the more obvious operations of fundamental princi- 
ples. Those who are still more credulous will feel still less need for elaborate de- 
monstrations. The great mass of those who have some aspirations after reform 
have no ideal beyond the first stage of the results of true principles. Their present 
conception will be filled by relations of justice, — the extinction of crime, frauds, 
pauperism, and the generally discordant features of our existing social arrange- 
ments. They have little thought of the positive construction of harmonic society. 
There is danger that such persons would be repelled, rather than attracted, by any 
high-wrought pictures of the future. They can best be left to work out a higher 
conception by their own intuitions and reflections while laboring for the realiza- 
tion of what they now perceive. There are others, especially among the admirers 
of Robert Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier, whose mental vision is accustomed to 
the contemplation of brilliant pictures, and who will be not unlikely to complain 
of the Science of Society, as here presented, on the ground that it does not begin 
by dealing with palatial structures, magnificent ornamental grounds, operatic per- 
formances, sculpture, and abundant luxury of all sorts. To those among this latter 
class who trace effects back to their causes, and causes forward to their effects, who 
can listen with pleasure to the dry preliminary details of rigid science, the Cost 
Principle will, on examination, become a mine rich in treasures of the kind they 
are seeking. They will discover that by means of it we are planting the roots from 
which will inevitably grow all the higher harmonic results in society vvhicli they 
have ever contemplated. They will perceive that true society is a growth from true 
principles, not an artificial formation, — a growth from seeds implanted in the seH'l 
of such society as now exists, — the only soil we have. They will perceive that 
while their ends and purposes are true, and their aspirations prophetic, their 



122 The Science of Society. 

methods have not been scientific; and such, perhaps few in number, will return 
with renewed zeal to the work of reform, through the more modest and unpretend- 
ing instrumentalities of the Labor Note and the formation of Equitable Villages. 
Others, who have been too long dazzled by the splendor of that brilliant future in 
which they make their ideal habitation to be able to look with complacency upon 
any practical adaptation to the present wants of mankind, must bide their time. 

192. My present labor is to commend the Cost Principle, as far as practicable, 
to each of these several classes without offending the prejudices of any. I shall 
therefore, as I have intimated, sketch merely in outline the tendencies of this prin- 
ciple to accomplish, in social relations, the highest results that have ever been 
dreamed of by any class of reformers, leaving at the same time intact, at every 
stage of progress, the freedom of the Individual. It is not those ulterior results 
with which the reformers of this day will have chiefly to employ themselves. 
Those who require to perceive them to find in the principles a sufficient stimulus 
to work for their realization, and with whom the beatific vision would serve rather 
as a stimulant than as a sedative, will be precisely those who can fill up the picture 
without foreign aid. 

193. The principal among the higher results growing directly out of the opera- 
tions of the Cost Principle may be generalized under the heads of: 1. Attractive 
Industry. 2. Cooperation instead of Antagonism, and 3. The Economies of Co- 
operation and the Large Scale. 

194. The main features of Attractive Industry are, as already shown, that each 
individual have, at all times, the choice of his own pursuits, with the opportunity 
to vary them ad libitum. This last, the opportunity to vary one's industry, results 
from the fact that all avenues are equally open to all by the extinction of specula- 
tion, and the adoption of cost as the limit of price, whereby it becomes the interest 
of all that each should perfect himself in various occupations, thereby discovering 
those at which he can be most effective, and avoiding the liability to be employed 
at those for which he has no attraction or capacity. The freedom to vary involves 
the original freedom to choose, which stands upon the same basis. The variety of 
individual taste leads to a continual deviation on the part of single individuals 
from the common standards of estimate, according to which every article tends 
constantly to acquire, under the operation of the Cost Principle, a settled and de- 
terminate price. The ideas here suggested require, however, to be separately and 
more specifically considered. 

195. How is there any equality established in the price asked by different people 
for the same kind of labor, when the price is based upon the estimate which each 
one makes of the repugnance of that labor to himself or herself personally, — when, 
too, it is well known that there exists such variety of tastes, or attractions and re- 
pulsions in different individuals for various kinds of industry? 

The answer is first practical, as follows : During the three years and upward of . 



Coxt the Limit of Price. 123 

practice at Trial ville, aud during two previous experiments, one at Cincinnati, 
and one at New Harmony, Indiana, extending to six or seven years of the practice 
of the Cost Principle, and of the use of the Labor Note in connection with it, by 
several thousand people in all, the variation in all the different species of male and 
female industry has not been more than about one third above and one third be- 
low the standard occupation of corn-raising, each person putting his or her own 
estimate upon their labor. To explain: The standard labor being reckoned at 
twenty pounds of corn to the hour, as the yard-stick, or measure of comparison, 
no other labor performed either by man or woman — and it must be remembered 
that under the Cost Principle men and women are remunerated equally — has been 
estimated at more than thirty pounds of corn to the hour, nor at less than twelve 
pounds to the hour. 

19G. The further practical result is that every ordinary commodity, though li- 
able to fluctuate in price with every change of circumstances, like a difference of 
locality, extraordinary difference in the productiveness of different seasons, etc., 
soon finds a general level, and has a known or fixed price in the community, which 
is never disturbed except for some obvious cause. Thus, for example, wheat has in 
this manner settled down by the common suffrage at Trial ville to cost six hours 
of labor to the bushel, or to yield ten pounds to the hour. Milk is ten minutes labor 
to the quart, — the elements of the calculation including the whole cost of rearing 
a cow from the calf, the average length of a cow's usefulness for milking purposes, 
the cost of feeding, milking, and distributing the milk to the customers, etc. Eggs 
are twenty minutes to the dozen. Potatoes are an hour and a quarter to the bushel 
when cultivated by the plough exclusively, and three or four hours to the bushel 
when cultivated by the hoe. The manufacture of shoes, apart from the material, 
is from three hours to nine hours to the pair, according to the quality; boots 
eighteen hours, etc. 

197. Another practical effect, as already observed, is that the principle of exact 
equity, when it enters into the mind, operates with such force that persons on all 
hands become over-anxious to ascertain the precise truth with regard to the relative 
cost of every article, while the general improvement of condition renders them less 
anxious about trifling individual advantage. 

19S. Although commodities thus settle naturally and rapidly to a standard price 
according to what is the average time bestowed upon their production, and the 
average estimate of the relative repugnance of each kind of labor, — in other 
words, the average of cost, — there are, or may be, individual differences in the 
estimate of repugnance, which will rise far above or sink below the average. 
These individualities of preference for one species of industry over another will 
probably become more marked in proportion as men and women can better afford 
to indulge their tastes and preferences, in- consequence of a general improvement 
of their pecuniary condition. Again, those tastes themselves will become more 



124 The Science of Society. 

developed with the increase of culture. The opportunity for their indulgence will 
be afforded also in proportion to the augmentation of the circle in which these 
principles are practised. Hence it follows that whatever is more exceptional or 
recondite in the subject must as yet be settled by recurring to the principles them- 
selves, the circle in which they have hitherto been applied being too small to realize 
all the results. 

199. The theoretical answer, then, deduced from the principle, in addition to 
the practical answer just given, is this: Whenever an individual estimates labor 
in any particular branch of industry as less onerous or repugnant than the standard 
or average estimate, he will present himself as a candidate for that kind of labor 
at a less price per hour than others, and will, in consequence, be selected in prefer- 
ence to others, unless the inferior price is more than counterbalanced by want of 
skill or capacity for that kind of labor. But preference for a particular kind, of 
industry — especially when there are facilities for trying one's self at various 
kinds — generally accompanies and often results from superior skill or facility in 
the performance of that kind of labor. Hence a taste or " attraction " for a par- 
ticular branch of industry, by lowering the price at which a person is ready to 
undertake it, tends to throw that branch of industry, or rather that particular 
labor, into the hands of the individual who has that attraction. 

200. In the nest place, as these two properties — namely, a marked attraction 
and eminent ability for a particular kind of labor — accompany each other, it fol- 
lows that the best talent is procured at the lowest instead of the highest price, 
apart from the case of an acquired skill, which has required a separate and unpro- 
ductive labor for its acquisition, and which is, therefore, as we have seen, an ele- 
ment of cost and price. In other words, contrary to what is now the case, the man 
or woman who can do the most work of any given kind in a given time and do it best, 
will work at the cheapest rate, so that, both on account of the more and letter work 
and of the less price, he or she will have the advantage in bidding for his or her 
favorite occupation, competition intervening to bring down the average of price to 
the lowest point for every article, but with none but beneficial results to any one, as will 
be presently more distinctly shown. (208.) 

201. Such are the necessary workings of the Cost Principle, and hence follow 
certain extremely important results. I. Herein is the chief element of "Attractive 
Industry," the grand desideratum of human conditions, first distinctly propounded 
by Fourier, and now extensively appreciated by reformers, — the choice by each 
individual of his own function or occupation, according to his natural bias or 
genius, and the consequent employment of all human powers to the best advan- 
tage of all. 

202. II. By this means competition is directed to, and made to work at, precisely the 
right point. Competition is spoken of by those who live in and breathe the atmo- 
sphere of the existing social order, as "the life of business,"— the grand stimulant, 



Cost the Limit of Price. 125 

without which the world would sink into stagnation. It is spoken of, on the other 
hand, by the reformers of the Socialist school, who loathe the existing order, and 
long earnestly for the reign of harmony in human relations, as a cruel and mon- 
strous principle, kept in operation only at the sacrifice of the blood and tears of 
the groaning millions of mankind. In point of fact it is both; or, more properly, 
it is either one or the other, according to the direction in which it is allowed to 
operate. Competition is a motive power, like steam or electricity, and is either 
destructive or genial, according to its application. In the existing social order it 
is chiefly destructive, because it operates upon the point of insuring security of con- 
dition, or the means of existence. It is, therefore, desperate, unrelenting, and con- 
sequently destructive. Under the reign of equity it will operate at the point of 
superiority of performance in the respective functions of each member of society, 
and will, therefore, be purely beneficent in its results. In the scramble between 
wrecked and struggling seafarers for places in the life-boat, we have an illustra- 
tion of competition for security of condition. In the generous emulation between 
those safely seated in a pleasure-boat, who think themselves most competent to 
pull at the oar, you have an illustration of genial or beneficent competition — 
competition for superiority of performance — under such circumstances that, who- 
ever carries off the palm, the interests of the whole are equally promoted. In 
either case it is the same motive power, the same energy-giving principle, working 
merely at a different point, or with a different application, and with a different 
stimulus. (159.) 

203. Competition in the existing social order is, therefore, chiefly destructive, 
because there is now no security of condition for any class of society. Among 
the less fortunate classes, competition bears more upon the point of getting the 
chance to labor at all, at any occupation, which, inequitably paid, as the labor of 
those classes is, will afford the bare means of existence. Among the more fortu- 
nate classes, increased accumulation is the only means now known of approximating 
security of condition; hence competition bears upon that point. Among all classes, 
therefore, the competition is chiefly for security of condition, and therefore merci- 
less and destructive. It is only occasionally and by way of exception, wherever a 
little temporary security is obtained, that examples are found of the natural and 
beneficent competition for superiority of performance. That however springs up 
with such spontaneous alacrity, so soon as the smallest chance is given it, as abun- 
dantly to prove that it is the true spirit, the indigenous growth of the human soul, 
when uncontrolled by adverse circumstances and conditions. 

204. Under the operations of the Cost Principle, which will be the reign of 
equity, the primary wants of each will be supplied by the employment of a very 
small portion of their time, and the ease and certainty with which they can be sup- 
plied will place each above the motives now existing to invade the property of 
others. This condition of things, together with the substitution of general co- 



126 The Science of Society. 

operation and abundance for general antagonism and poverty, will furnish a secu- 
rity of person and property which nothing else can produce. To this will be added 
such accumulations as each may, without the stimulus of desperation, choose to 
acquire. 

205. In this condition of security, natural and beneficent competition will spring 
up; that is, such as bears upon the point of superiority of performance, — not only 
for such reasons as exist and occasionally develop themselves in the existing soci- 
ety, but also because, under the operation of the Cost Principle, every person is, 
as we have seen, necessarily gratified with the pursuit of his favorite occupation, 
in proportion as his superiority of performance renders him the more successful 
competitor for employment in that line, — not hindered by asking a higher price 
for his greater excellence, as now, but aided, on the other hand, by his readiness 
to perform it at a lower price, consequent upon his greater attraction or his want 
of repugnance for that kind of industry, according to what has been already ex- 
plained. This, then, is the second grand result of the varying tastes for different 
occupations, under the operation of the Cost Principle, — namely, that competi- 
tion is directed to, and made to work at, the right point, — superiority of perform- 
ance, not security of condition. 

206. Under the operation of cost as the limit of price, things will be so com- 
pletely revolutionized that, strange as it may seem, it will be to the positive interest 
of every workman to be thrown out of his own business by the competition of any one 
who can do the same labor better and cheaper. In the nature of the case it is an ad- 
vantage for every body that the prices of every product should become less and 
less, until, if that be possible, they cease, through the general abundance, to have 
price altogether. Under the present false arrangements of commerce we have seen 
that it is not for the benefit, but for the injury of many, that such reduction of 
price should occur, either through competition, the invention of new machines, or 
otherwise. (160.) Some of the reasons of that unnatural result have been pointed 
out. (161, 162.) It is, in fine, because the workingmen are reduced below the 
ability of availing themselves of what should be, in the nature of things, a blessing 
to all mankind. When the market is said to be overstocked with coats or hats 
and when, as a consequence of this, the tailors and hatters are thrown out of em- 
ployment, it is not the fact that there are more coats and hats made than there are 
backs and heads to wear them. Not at all. It is only that there are more than 
there is ability to buy. Those who have earned the means to pay for them do not 
possess the means. They have been robbed of the means by receiving less than 
equivalents for their labor. Hence, though they want, they cannot buy, and hence, 
again, those who produce must stop producing. They are therefore thrown out of 
employment, and it is falsely said that there is over-production in that branch of 
industry. In the reign of equity, where all receive equivalents for their labor, this 
cause of what is called over-production will not exist, 



Cost the Limit of Price. 127 

207. The point here asserted will be rendered still more clear under the follow- 
ing head. (208.) Along with the extinction of speculation, by Cost as the limit 
of Price, competition will cease to be a desperate game played for desperate stakes. 
It will not relate to procuring the opportunity to labor, as that will be the common 
and assured inheritance of all. It will not relate to securing an augmentation of 
Price, because Price will be adjusted by Science and guarded by Good Morals, 
public opinion and private interest concurring to keep it at what science awards. 
It will relate solely, in fine, to excellence of performance, — to the giving to eac h 
individual of that position in life to which his tastes incline him, and for which his 
powers of mind and body adapt him, even the selfishness that might otherwise 
embitter such a strife being tempered, or neutralized, by the equilibrium of a 
greater price for more repugnant labor. 

208. III. Competition is rendered cooperative instead of antagonistic. This may 
not at first seem to be a distinct point, but it is really so. It was shown before 
that competition is made to work at the right point, — namely, excellence of per- 
formance. But that excellence or superiority might still enure exclusively or 
chiefly to the benefit of the individual who possesses it. Such is now the case, to a 
fearful extent, with machinery, which has the first of these properties, — namely, 
that it competes with labor at the right point, excellence of performance, — but 
has not the second; that is, it is not cooperative with unaided human labor, but 
antagonistic to it, turning out thousands of laborers to starve, on account of its own 
superiority. 

The point to be shown now is, that under the operation of the Cost Principle, 
excellence of performance — the point competed for, whether by individuals or 
machinery — enures equally to the benefit of all, and hence that competition, 
rightly directed, and working under the true law of price, is cooperative and not 
antagonistic ; although, as respects machinery, the demonstration will be rendered 
more perfect when we come to consider the legitimate use of capital. (243.) 

209. Illustrations of practical operation will be better understood if drawn from 
the affairs of the small village than if taken from the more extended and complex 
business of the large town. 

Suppose, then, that in such a village A is an extraordinary adept with the axe. 
He can chop three cords of wood a day. C and D are the next in facility at this 
labor to A, and can chop two cords and a half a day. Now, under the opera- 
tion of this principle, as showed previously, if they are employed at all in chopping, 
they will all be paid at the same rate per hour. If there is any difference, it will 
probably be that A, along with this superior ability, will have an extraordinary 
fondness for the kind of labor as compared with other kinds, or, what is the same 
thing, he will have less repugnance for it, and that he will, if thoroughly imbued 
with the principle, place his labor at a less price than the established average price 
for wood-chopping. The consequence will be that the services of A will be first 



128 The Science of Society. 

called into requisition for all the wood-chopping in the village, so long as there is 
not more than he can or is willing to do. It will only be when the quantity of 
labor is greater than he can or will perform that the services of C and D will be 
required, then those of the next grade of capacity, and so on. The point now to 
be illustrated is that it is the whole village that is benefited by the superior excel- 
lence of A, and then of B and C, etc., in this business, and not those individuals 
alone. While A can chop all the wood for the village, the price of wood-chopping 
is less, or, in other words, wood-chopping is cheaper to the whole village than it is 
when the inferior grades of talent have to be brought in ; because he does more 
work in the hour, and is paid no more in any event, and perhaps less for it. Con- 
sequently, again, the cost, and hence the price of cooking, and hence again of board, 
is all less to every consumer. So of heating rooms. So of the blacksmith's work, 
the shoemaker's work, and, in fine, of every article of consumption produced in the 
village; because the manufacturers of all these articles, while engaged in the man- 
ufacture, consume wood, which wood has to be chopped, and the cost of which 
enters into the cost of their products ; and inasmuch as these products are again 
sold at cost, it follows that the price of every article manufactured and consumed 
is reduced by the superior excellence of A as a wood-chopper. In this general ad- 
vantage A is merely a common participant with the other inhabitants ; but then, 
in turn, the same principle is operating to place each of those others in that occu- 
pation in which he excels, and their excellence in each of these occupations, re- 
spectively, is operating in the same manner to reduce the price of every other article 
which A, as well as others, has to purchase. Hence it follows that the very com- 
petition which crowds a man out of one occupation and fills it with another, on 
account of his superior performance, turns just as much to the benefit of the man 
who is put out of his place, as it does to that of the man who is installed in it, all 
avenues being open to him to enter other pursuits, and there being labor enough 
at some pursuit for all. Hence it follows that under the operation of the Cost 
Principle competition is rendered cooperative, and that cooperation becomes uni- 
versal instead of the now prevailing antagonism of interests. 

210. Let us take an additional illustration. In wood-chopping the chief point 
of superiority is in the rapidity of performance. In other occupations it is dif- 
ferent. Take the case of a clerk or copyist. Here there are three or four points 
of excellence, — speed, elegance, legibility, and accuracy. All this does not in the 
least affect the principle. The competition may be for the combination of the 
greatest excellence in each of these properties, or it may be, in case there is 
enough of the business to divide itself into branches, for the particular kind of 
excellence which is wanted in the particular branch. There is some copying in 
which speed is of far more importance than elegance, and vice versa. It is still, in 
the same manner, to the mutual advantage of all that those persons shall be em- 
ployed in writing, and in each branch of writing, who are most expert in it, be- 



Cost the Limit of Price. 129 

cause that reduces to everybody the price of making out titles to property, keeping 
records, and the like, and, as these expenses enter again into the cost, and conse- 
quently into the price of houses and rent, they enter again into the price of board, 
and so of every article, rendering the competition again cooperative and nut 
antagonistic. 

211. It has now, I think, been sufficiently shown that competition, under this 
system of principles, is really cooperative, and therefore purely beneficent, pro- 
vided the two conditions above-stated are sufficiently secured : first, that the avenut s 
be open to every individual to enter any pursuit according to his tastes without <uii- 
jicial obstacles; and, secondly, that there be at all times labor enough for all. 

Every body will, therefore, be naturally and continually aided, from the common 
interest, by every body around him, in placing himself in that position where lie 
has most capacity to act, which, as has been stated, will, in the end, be that also, i I 
he has the opportunity to try himself at different occupations, for which he will 
have the greatest fondness or appetency. The avenues to employment must, there- 
fore be all open to all persons. It will be as much to the interest of all that they 
should be so, as it is now their interest to prevent it. Now men wish to monopo- 
lize certain occupations which are profitable, because it is to their pecuniary ad- 
vantage to do so. Then men can have no other motive for doing so than their 
preference for exercising these occupations themselves, which preference must be 
indulged, if indulged at all, by keeping out better qualified men, adversely to their 
own pecuniary interests and the interests of the whole community around them. 

21*2. But when antagonistic competition is out of the way, similar industrial 
tastes form one of the strongest bonds of friendship. In a community constituted 
upon these principles, to keep any person out of his true industrial position, by 
conspi'/acy of any sort, would be both a dishonest and a dishonorable act. Hence 
it follows that pecuniary interest, natural sympathy with those of similar tastes, 
morality, and the sense of honor would all conspire to overcome any personal 
preference for a particular occupation such as would otherwise exclude better 
qualified men. This combination of motives will be sufficient to keep a fair and 
open field for the contest of merit in every department of industry. In the exist- 
ing social disorder men are, for the most part, thrust by chance into the positions 
which they occupy and the pursuits which they follow. .Nobody but the man him- 
self feels the slightest interest in his being in that place in which he can make the 
best use of his powers. If his position happens to be a fortunate adaptation to 
his capacities, the gain is his own. It is monopolized by him through the opera- 
tion of the value principle, or the benefit, if felt at all by the public, is so remotely 
felt that there is no general interest manifested in the matter, and it is accordingly 
left entirely to chance. Consequently, men, considered merely as instruments of 
production, are now employed as much at random as the implements of a farm 
would be, if a savage, smitten with a taste lor agriculture, had installed himself 



130 Tlie Science of Society. 

in the farm-house, and begun by using the harrow for a hetchel, the hand-saw for 
an axe, the sickle for a pruning-hook, the rake for a hoe, and so on. Hence, under 
the operation of the Cost Principle, the superior excellence of each individual in 
that occupation in which he excels secures his employment in it, both because that 
is the point upon which competition bears, and because the advantage of his being 
employed in it inures directly to the benefit of every member of society by lower- 
ing the price of the article which he produces, rendering every one anxious to see 
him so placed and ready to aid him by every means to place himself there. 

213. It has been stated, and partially demonstrated, that the idea of the liabil- 
ity to an excess of human labor is on a par with the obsolete notion of an excess 
of blood in the human system. (161.) With the prevalence of a thorough and 
varied industrial education on the part of the whole people, such as is rendered 
possible by the Cost Principle, but the details of which do not belong to this 
volume; with the removal of all artificial obstacles to the free entrance by all upon 
all industrial pursuits ; with adequate arrangements for knowing the wants of all, 
and for distributing the products of all, so as skilfully to subserve those wants 
through a scientific adjustment of supply to demand; with that complete removal of 
the hindrances to the free interchange of commodities now occasioned by the scar- 
city and expensiveness of the circulating medium, which will result from the Labor 
Note as a currency, converting all labor at once into cash, and the means of com- 
manding the results of all other labor the world over, — with- all these conditions, 
and various others of less moment, operated by these principles, the infinitely 
varying wants of humanity, perpetually expanding under culture, together with 
the tendency to rest and simply enjoy, on the part of those who can, fostered by 
conscious security of condition, may be implicitly relied upon to call into use every 
degree and quality of human labor which any body will be found willing to ren- 
der, even down to the lowest grades of skill, notwithstanding the fact that those 
who thus come in as it were last will be best paid. 

214. IV. — This brings us to the next point, — namely, the Economies of Co- 
operation and of the Large Scale. Of the first branch of this subject, the economies 
of cooperation, including attraction, it cannot be necessary that much should be 
said. Illustrations have already been given of the waste of human exertion con- 
sequent upon antagonism, and the want of adaptation between the man and his 
pursuit. (151, 212.) The genius of any reader is adequate to filling up the hide- 
ous catalogue to repletion. Equity destroys antagonism, and opens the way to the 
performance of every function in the most economical way. 

215. The economy resulting upon the performance of labor upon the large 
instead of the small scale is well understood and highly appreciated in our present 
stage of civilization, just so far as the application of the principle chances to have 
been made. It is known, for example, that a thousand persons can be profitably 
transported at a trip, upon a magnificent steamboat, from New York to Albany, a 



Cost the Limit of Price. 131 

distance of one hundred and sixty miles, at fifty cents for each person, while to 
run the same boat, or any boat with like elegance and conveniences, ten miles, for 
the accommodation of one individual, would cost several hundred dollars. It is 
not yet generally understood that the same principle applied on land may, and will 
yet, house the whole population in palaces, and cause the masses of mankind to 
enjoy an immunity from want heretofore enjoyed by the privileged classes only. 
The glorious truth is not yet generally understood that every man, woman, and 
child may, by a scientific arrangement of the appliances for the production and 
distribution of wealth, be rendered infinitely richer than any, even the most privi- 
leged individual, is now. After having seen that lucifer matches can be manufac- 
tured and sold at a penny a bunch by carrying on the manufacture as a business 
upon the large scale, the absurdity would immediately appear — the waste of 
human exertion would be too obvious to escape attention — if every housekeeper 
in a large city were to rise each successive morning, go out and purchase a few 
splinters of pine, with a little pot of sulphur, and manufacture, by the expenditure 
of half an hour's time, from one to a half dozen matches with which to kindle her 
fire the following day. It is not so readily perceived, however, as it will be at a 
future day, that the absurdity is of the same sort when seventy-five thousand 
women are engaged daily, in the city of New York, and twice a day, in boiling 
three quarts of water each in a tea-kettle. The benefits of labor saving machinery 
are derived from the operation of this principle, the essential economy of the large 
scale. In the isolated household those benefits can never be applied to cooking, 
washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the like. Hence, in the isolated household, 
the drudgery to which woman is now condemned can never be materially allevi- 
ated. The facility with which these tiresome labors are now performed in the large 
American hotels, in some of our charitable institutions, and even in prisons, is a 
standing irony upon the wretched and poverty-stricken arrangements of our do- 
mestic establishments. Any system of social reorganization which should involve 
the necessity of individual or family isolation would be, therefore, essentially 
faulty, while, on the other hand, every individual must be left entirely free to seek 
and enjoy as much solitude or privacy as he or she may choose, assuming for them- 
selves the additional cost of such indulgence. 

216. While the public at large have not pushed their investigations into the 
wonderful results which are yet to come from new applications of this principle of 
economy, — in the immense augmentation of wealth, leisure, luxury, and refine- 
ment to be participated in by the whole people, — Social Reformers have not failed 
to do so. Many of them have reveled in their brilliant imaginings of the future 
until they have become maddened at the stupidity of the world, and denounce 
with a vehemence, which seems insanity to their less appreciative fellow-men, the 
folly and absurdity of our existing social arrangements. The folly is, however, by 
no means confined to the Conservative. The Socialist has proposed no method of 



132 The Science of Society. 

I\ 

i i , 

realizing the splendid social revolution which he advocates, other than combina- 
tions, industrial associations, or extensive partnership interests. The Conservative 
has rightly seen in such arrangements insuperable difficulties of administration, 
and a ruinous surrender of the freedom of the individual. The demand is now 
urgent for a solution of this embroglio. The Cost Principle furnishes that solution 
in that method of its operation which I am about to specify. Herein, then, is the 
conciliation of the seemingly conflicting truths of Socialism and Conservatism. 

217. It has been already stated that the individualization or disconnection of 
interests insisted upon by us has in it none of the features of isolation, — that 
there is, in fine, in these principles, nothing adverse to the largest enterprises, 
and the most thorough organization in every department of business. The discon- 
nection relates to the methods of ownership and administration, not to the aggregation 
of persons. It is adverse alone to sinking the distinction or blending the lines of 
individual property, but in no manner to the closest association, the most intimate 
relations, and the most effective cooperation between the owners of the interests 
thus sharply defined. We affirm, indeed, that it is only out of this prior and con- 
tinuous rigid ascertainment of rights that mutual harmony and beneficial co- 
operation can ever accrue. To obliterate the lines of individual property and 
administration is always and everywhere to plunge into utter and hopeless confu- 
sion. Such is the sin of Communism. To interlock and combine the several in- 
terests of a community so that the will of one party, in the management of his 
own, can be overborne by the will of another individual, or any majority of indi- 
viduals in the world, or his conduct in the administration of that which is his 
subjected to the authorized criticism of others, is a species of multiplication in 
which confusion and despotism are the factors, and the natural and inevitable 
product, in all delicately constituted and well-developed minds, abhorrence and 
disgust. Such is the sin of all partnerships, Trades' Associations, and Fourieristic 
Phalansterian joint-stock arrangements whatsoever. 

218. Let it be observed distinctly, however, that in none of these proposed re- 
organizations of society is the fallacy to be found in the magnificent amplitude of 
dimensions, the complex variety of development, the intimate societary life, the 
general prevalence of wealth, luxury, and refinement, nor in the indispensable 
postulatum of universal cooperation. All this, and more, lies hid in the womb of 
time, and the hour of parturition is at hand. The futility of all these schemes of 
social regeneration is to be found alone in the want of individualization as the 
starting point, the perpetual accompaniment, and the final development of the 
movement, and the failure to discover that in harmonious juxtaposition with the 
complete severance and apparent opposition of individual interests lies the most 
liberal, perfect, and all-pervading system of mutual cooperation, developed through 
a process almost ridiculously simple, — the mere cessation of mutual robbei'y 
by the erection and observance of a scientific measure of price and standard of 
equivalents. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 133 

219. A single illustration will reader clear the way in which, out of the limita- 
tion of all price to the mere cost of performance and product ion, grows the ten- 
dency to aggregation, and the doing of all work upon the large, and thereby upon 
the economical scale, — but without partner slap interest or Combination in the technical 
sinse of that term, as differing from Cooperation. (49, 50.) Take the case of an 
Eating-House conducted upon the Cost Principle. If fifty, one hundred, or five 
hundred persons eat at the same establishment, the economy is immense over pro- 
viding the same number of people with the same style of living in ten, twenty, or 
one hundred separate establishments. Hence the large and elegant eating saloon, 
with cleanliness, order, artistic skill, aud abundance, in the preparation of food, is 
a cheaper arrangement than the meagre and ill-conditioned private table. The 
general facts in this respect are too well known to require to be specifically estab- 
lished. In the Eating-House, as it now exists in large cities, the economy here 
spoken of is actually secured, — that is, each boarder is fed at less actual cost than 
he could be in the isolated household; but the saving thus effected does not go 
into the pocket of the boarder, nor accrue in any manner to his benefit. On the 
contrary, he is ordinarily compelled to pay more than it would cost him to supply 
himself at home. Hence, there is no general and controlling influence of the 
eating-house system to call the population out of their private establishments and 
induce them to live upon the large scale, at public saloons. There are conveniences 
and agreeable features in that mode of life which address themselves to certain 
classes of persons, bachelors with ample means, merchants whose business is at a 
distance from their homes, travelers, temporary citizens, etc., which overbalance 
the repulsion of enhauced price, and supply these establishments with a given 
amount of custom. They fail, however, on account of that enhanced price, to 
break up, as they would inevitably do if the price were much less instead of 
greater, the isolated household system of cookery, which is now one of the primary 
causes of the unmitigated drudgery and undevelopinent of the female sex. 

220. As stated, then, the saving from the large scale now actually takes place, 
as it would do under the true system of administration ; but, instead of going to 
the benefit of the boarders of the establishment, it goes first in the form of profits 
to the keeper of the house, then in the form of rent from him to the party who 
owns the house, and, finally, it is probable, in the form of interest from the owner 
of the premises to the money-lender, who has loaned the capital to construct it, 
while at the same time the operation of the principle is restricted, and the amount 
of the saving diminished, by the causes which prevent the population generally 
from resorting to such establishments. Under the operation of the Cost Principle 
all this is reversed. Nobody stands between the boarder and the saving which 
grows naturally out of the economical tendency of the large scale. Nobody re- 
ceives the benefit but himself. The keeper of the house makes no profit, but is 
paid simply an equivalent for his labor, according to its degree of burdensomeness 



134 The Science of Society. 

or repugnance, — less, if it is less repugnant, than an attendant on the tables, or a 
cook in the kitchen. The owner of the house receives no rent, in the nature of 
profit, but merely the wear and tear of the premises, — the cost of maintaining them 
in an equally good condition (241) ; and, finally, there is no money-lender, levying 
an additional contribution for the supply of a circulating medium so scarce and ex- 
pensive as to be capable of being monopolized. Hence, whoever lives at an Eating- 
House managed upon the Cost Principle lives either at a much cheaper rate than 
he can live in a private way, or else in a much better style, or else with both of 
these elements of attraction combined. Hence, again, there is a potent influence 
under that principle, operating upon the whole community to draw them out of 
their present solitary and poverty-stricken household arrangements into a larger 
sphere of elegance, comfort, and refinement, while at the same time their full free- 
dom is preserved to remain as they are, at their own cost. The seeds of a great 
social revolution are planted, while no prejudice is shocked. There is no pledge 
demanded, no premeditated concert of action, no sudden overturn or derangement 
of social habits, no enforced conformity, no authorized espionage and criticism. 
The change is effected gently, gradually, unobtrusively, and considerately toward 
all existing habits and feelings. 

221. Nor is the social revolution thus foreshadowed less radical and entire than 
that which is 'aspired after by the most advanced of Social Reformers. It differs 
in the fact that it is a natural growth from simple roots implanted in the common 
understanding, in the form of principles or mere suggestions of honesty, — not a 
splendid and complicated a priori arrangement of details as a great work of art. 
The same principle here illustrated with reference to the Eating-House applies of 
course to the Public Wash-House, to the Infant School, or Common Nursery for 
the professional rearing, training, and development of children, and to every other 
advantageous arrangement of societary life. Relieved of the burden of cooking, 
washing, and nursing, except as her tastes lead her to participate in one or other 
of these pursuits professionally, it becomes competent to woman to elect and vary 
her career in life with as much freedom as man. Then, and never until then, can 
woman become an Individual herself, instead of a mere hanger-on upon the'des- 
tinies of another. Then, and not until then, can the intellect of the woman be 
developed so as to form the appropriate counterpoise to her affectionate nature. 
There is not, in our existing society, one woman in a hundred who knows as much 
at the age of forty as she knew at twenty. Confined, for the most part, to the 
same narrow circle of household affairs, with children, nurses, and housemaids as 
her associates, she shrinks mentally instead of expanding, and comes finally to 
nauseate, and to object with sickly fastidiousness to those changes in her condition 
which are essential to her emancipation. Hence it is only in the rare case of highly 
endowed and well-developed womanhood that the Social Reformer meets the hearty 
sympathy of the sex in those plans of domestic amelioration which are indispens- 



Cost the Limit of Price. 135 

able to the assumption by her of that rank in the social hierarchy for which nature 
has disposed her, and which, despite of herself, as it were, she is destined to attain. 

222. Again, when these several domestic functions are performed severally up- 
on the large scale, additional conveniences will be found to arise from combining 
the Eating-House, the Laundry, the Nursery, the Lying-in Department, etc., etc., 
in one unitary edifice, and conducting the whole upon a plan not inferior, perhaps, 
in magnificence and extent to the Phalansterian order of Fourier. It is not my 
purpose to trace out these ulterior developments of the principle. The social phi- 
losopher will, from this point, do that for himself. However magnificent may be 
the scale upon which the social order, growing out of these principles, shall finally 
adjust itself, there will be in it always the marked distinction from every Social 
Reform heretofore proposed, — that every grand public undertaking, whether it be 
an Eating Establishment to accommodate several hundred persons or families, a 
Hospital, a Public Laundry, a Hotel for the accommodation of travelers, a Factory, 
a huge Workshop, a Plantation, the complicated arrangements of transportation 
and navigation, or, finally, the Phalanstery itself, combining every convenience 
and all the functions of social life on the most extended scale, will still be a strictly 
individual enterprise, the outbirth of the genius and activity of a single mind. 
Hundreds of men and women may be engaged in the administration, some of whom 
will be at the head of the various departments, but all of them rigidly subordinate 
to the grand design of the projector, who will be the despot of his own dominions, 
exercising, nevertheless, a beneficent despotism, wherein the highest and best ex- 
pression of himself, wrought out in his work, redounds equally to the good of all 
others who are related in any manner to the transaction, — a self-elected governor 
of mankind, by the divine right of genius or supereminent ability to excogitate 
and perform. At the same time, whoever evinces the higher grades of inventive 
and organizing talent will have the command freely of the requisite capital to aid 
the execution of his designs, limited only by the aggregate amount of surplus cap- 
ital in the community as compared with the number of such beneficent enterprises 
on foot. This effect will result from the fact that, under the operation of the Cost 
Principle, capital of itself earns nothing, and hence that all persons in the com- 
munity who have surplus accumulations of wealth will prefer that such accumula- 
tions shall be intrusted to, and be administered by, those persons who demonstrate 
the greatest capacity for doing so, in that way which will contribute most to the 
public welfare ; a benefit in which the owners of such capital will participate along 
with the whole public, — in addition to their right to withdraw their investments 
in such installments as they may require for their own use. The ideas involved 
in this paragraph will be further developed in the next chapter, in treating of Cap- 
ital and the "Wages System." (230, 249.) 

223. It follows, then, that by the simple operation of Equity attractive industry 
is secured, cooperation is rendered beneficent instead of destructive, all the eco- 



136 The Science of Society. 

nomies are effected, and this still with a complete preservation, on all hands, of 
Individuality and the Sovereignty of the Individual. Cooperation is rendered uni- 
versal by the same means, speculation is banished, antagonisms of all sorts are 
neutralized, a complete Adaptation of Supply to Demand is for the first time in . 
the world rendered practicable, and mankind enter upon a career of harmony, de- 
velopment, and happiness which the experience of all past ages has been but a; 
painful preparation to enjoy by strong contrast, as dark shadows relieve the lights i 
upon the canvas of the painter. Let the man or the woman who desires to parti- 
cipate in the work of installing the Reign of Harmony put his or her hand to the 
work. 



Cost the Limit of Price. 137 



CHAPTER VII. 



CAPITAL, RENT, INTEREST, WAGES, MACHINERY, ETC. 

224. It remains to point out more specifically the operation of the Cost Princi- 
ple upon Capital, Rent, Interest, Wages, and Machinery, with the true relations of 
these matters to labor. Serious questions have been raised, in the recent discus- 
sions upon reform, upon all of these subjects, and innumerable difficulties have 
been felt in arriving at any satisfactory adjustment of the points at issue. It has 
been seen that capital or wealth already accumulated is one element in the accu- 
mulation of additional wealth, and hence it has appeared to be equitable that such 
capital, or rather the parties to whom such accumulated wealth pertained, should 
have some share in the new accumulations, in the production of which their capital 
has been instrumental. In other words, it has been seen that wealth loaned to and 
employed by another is a real benefit to that other, and the question is forcibly 
asked, why, then, should not the borrower, in justice, remunerate the lender to the 
extent of the benefit received, or, at least, to the extent of some part of that bene- 
fit? This question has never been satisfactorily answered, and can never be an- 
swered so long as value, or benefit conferred, is recognized as a basis for remuneration 
or price. But we have seen that price rests, according to the true principles of 
science, wholly upon a different basis, and that benefit conferred is no ground of 
claim whatsoever. 

225. As this distinction between the true and the false basis of price is one of 
great importance to the solution of the questions now about to be treated of, I 
shall be pardoned for stating it again, and, if possible, rendering it still more ob- 
vious. All commerce has heretofore been conducted upon the idea of an exchange 
of equivalent benefits. This is what has been denominated the Value Principle, 
which has been shown, as well by an analysis of the principle itself as by the per- 
nicious consequences resulting from its operation, to be essentially erroneous. The 
basis principle of true commerce is, on the contrary, an exchange of equivalent bur- 
dens. No amount of benefit conferred by one human being upon another gives 
the slightest title to remuneration, provided the conferring of such benefit has cost 
nothing to the party conferring it. To impart pleasure, and to shed an atmosphere 
of happiness in every direction, is the true life of all refined and well-developed 
humanity. To levy tribute as a consideration for the exercise of one's own higher 
nature is to profane the most sacred things. It is true that the conferring of bene- 
fits does, by a natural effect, quicken the tendency to confer benefits in return, and 



138 The Science of Society. 

in this manner to produce reciprocity ; but that tendency is stronger in proportion to 
the absence of all claim to such reciprocity. Price, relating solely to what can be ap- 
propriately claimed, has, then, no basis in benefit conferred. Hence, there is no 
justification whatever for interest or rent on capital in the fact that the loan of 
capital confers a benefit upon the borrower which he would not otherwise enjoy. 
Whatever basis there may be, — and we shall see, presently, that there is a basis 
for a price, in some cases, for the use of capital, — it is not the benefit conferred, 
and the price must not be measured in any manner whatsoever by the amount of 
that benefit. 

226. Another argument is used on behalf of those who defend the participation 
of capital in the results of labor, with no clear distinction, apparently, between it 
and the one above stated, in the minds of those who employ it. It is said that, if 
I have property which I have accumulated by my labor, and you desire the use of 
it to enable you to accumulate property for yourself more rapidly than you could 
otherwise do, and I forego the use of it for your sake, and to my own deprivation, 
that I ought to be repaid for the sacrifice that I make. This position is rigidly 
correct. It is merely one form of statement of the Cost Principle itself. It is a 
statement that the sacrifice made, the burden endured, or the repugnance overcome 
on the part of the party making the loan, is a basis of price. It should be said, to 
make the statement complete, that such is the basis, and the only basis of price, so 
as to exclude entirely the mixed consideration of sacrifice endured by the one party 
and benefit conferred upon the other. All just price is in the nature of indemnifica- 
tion for damages. If no damage is incurred, no matter how enormous the benefit 
conferred, there can be no just price, and, if the damage be ten times the amount 
of the benefit, the extent of the damage is nevertheless the measure of the price. 
Hence, the Cost Principle does not arbitrarily decide that there shall be no price 
for the use of capital, or even that the price shall be extremely low. It simply de- 
termines when a price is allowable, and furnishes the standard by which the legiti- 
mate amount of the price may be ascertained. It sides with neither of the 
combatants upon the question, as the question has heretofore been discussed, but 
comes in between them and points out a new line of demarkation between the 
right and the wrong of the matter. 

1,227. This new line of demarkation runs with the amount of sacrifice which the 
owner and lender of capital undergoes in depriving himself temporarily of the use 
of it, no regard whatever being had to the amount of benefit which the borrower 
may derive from it. Hence it follows that all surplus capital — capital which the 
present convenience of the owner does not require for use or consumption, and 
which can be intrusted to the administration of another without more risk than 
would be incurred by retaining it in the custody of the owner (230) — will be open 
to loan, without price in the form of interest or rent. The element of risk is an- 
other ground upon which interest is defended. Just so far as augmented risk is 



Cost the Limit of Price. 139 

actually incurred by a loan, it is, in fact, a legitimate element of price, being part 
of the cost or burden imposed upon the lender. It will be shown, however, pre- 
sently, that by the operation of these principles risk will be reduced to a minimum, 
— to those inevitable, possible contingencies which may attach to the existence of 
wealth as well in the hands of the owner as anywhere else. Hence all capital 
which is a positive surplus over present necessities will be loaned — the moral and 
pecuniary security being ample — without price. (230.) 

228. But then the objection arises that the real sacrifice made by the lender in 
depriving himself of the use of capital, as of money, for example, under the exist- 
ing regime, is precisely measured by the amount of interest which can be obtained 
for it in the market; since by lending it without interest he is surrendering the op- 
portunity to accumulate that amount, and hence that the new rule comes back 
practically to the same thing as the old one. The fallacy of this objection would 
be quite obvious except for the perversion of the moral sense induced by the cor- 
rupting influence of the system in which we live. As it is, it may be necessary to 
probe it and expose it. It can be no sacrifice, it is no burden, it costs nothing, to 
the honest man, to surrender the opportunity which the wants of others confer upon 
him to force them to give to him what he is not entitled to receive. It has been 
shown that he is entitled to receive nothing upon the ground of their wants, or the 
consequent benefit or relief which the loan will confer. The argument is this: I 
recognize that, in a transaction which I am about to have with you, the limits of 
my just demand against you are the same as those of the amounts and claims 
which I am about to surrender; but then I find that among other things I am 
about to surrender an opportunity which circumstances have placed in my power 
to cheat you out of a thousand pounds, and I wish thereupon to augment my de- 
mand by that amount. Do you not perceive that I immediately forfeit all title to 
the appellation of an honest man? Do you not perceive that the case is the same, 
if I first recognize that the price I can justly charge you for the use of capital is 
the sacrifice which it costs me to part with it, and I then propose to include in that 
sacrifice the chance of getting from some one else more than the just price? 

229. Risk is stated by all writers on the subject as one of the grounds on which 
Interest or Rent on Capital rests, and I have admitted that it is a good ground of 
price just so far as the risk is augmented by the loan. Even in the existing order 
of society, however, it frequently happens that capital invested in the hands of an- 
other party is rendered quite as secure as it would be in the custody of the owner. 
It is possible, by bond and mortgage on real estate, for example, with an ample 
margin of value, to render the risk positively less than would be incurred by the 
owner in hoarding his wealth in his own strong box, or entrusting it to his banker. 
The risks of losing property are in some respects the same whether the owner re- 
tains it himself or permits it to go out of his hands; in other respects the risk is 
greatly enhanced, in the present state of things, by ceasing to guard it personally. 



140 The Science of Society. 

Some risks, from the accidents of nature, are perhaps such that they can never be 
foreseen and guarded against by any arrangements whatever, let the property be 
where it may. These, if there are such, make no basis of interest or rent on the 
capital when loaned, as it is a cost which the owner of the property must endure 
in any event. Other risks, dependent on the accidents of nature, are capable of 
being estimated with sufficient precision to be covered by insurance. These risks 
again furnish no basis of interest or rent to be charged on the borrower, unless the 
property is going to be employed in a more hazardous way. If so, the augmented 
rate of insurance falls equitably upon the borrower, and marks precisely the extent 
to which this element is the basis of price. Finally, risks are incurred, now, by 
the chances of speculation which attend nearly every use of capital, and by the 
prevailing habits of dishonesty which grow out of speculation, the want of any 
known standard of honesty, the general prevalence of poverty, distress, and com- 
mercial revulsions, together with the consequent want of security of condition, — 
in other words, out of the want of any knowledge in the public mind of what 
honesty is, and the want of such conditions of the individual as render honesty 
possible. Under the operation of the Cost Principle speculation is extinguished, 
and the dishonesty which grows out of that root is extinguished along with it. 
Poverty, pecuniary distress, and commercial revulsions will cease, and a general 
security of condition will be achieved ; and along with these changes will cease the 
temptations and constraint of circumstances, which force men now into dishonest 
practices, against the protest of their consciences, and to the absolute loathing of 
the real man within. An exact standard of honesty will exist in the mind of every 
one. Public sentiment will become as stringent in relation to the right and wrong 
of every commercial transaction as it is now in regard to bribe-taking aud perjury; 
and, finally, every man, woman, and child will be a banker, with a reputation to 
preserve untarnished, as the sole condition of enjoying merely commercial advan- 
tages and facilities, worth more than the most unlimited credit in the existing 
order of commercial affairs. Dishonesty, therefore, will cease along with the ces- 
sation of speculation or profit-making, and with the inauguration of these new 
principles of society. It is a fruit which grows upon the tree which is now cul- 
tivated, not upon that which we are proposing to plant. 

230. It follows from these considerations that all that class of risks — now by 
far the most considerable— which arise out of the contingencies of speculative 
commerce and the prevalent dishonesty of commercial nations disappear so soon as 
true principles are in operation. Hence they cease to be taken into account as a 
basis of interest or rent on capital. The lender lends with entire confidence, rest- 
ing upon the security of the property loaned, — which will remain in some form al- 
ways on hand to meet his demand, — the actual risks from the accidents of nature 
being covered, so far as practicable, by insurance. He recognizes in principle that 
his capital earns nothing; hence, if it is surplus with him, — that is, if he desires 



Cost the Limit of Price. 141 

to make no other present use of it than merely to preserve it, — it becomes at first 
immaterial to him whether it remains in his own custody or in the custody of a 
friend, while, in the second place, it is a relief to him to be freed from its admin- 
istration in the intermediate time; and, finally, he will be, along with all the rest 
of the community, a participant in the benefits which will result to the whole pub- 
lic from having it occupied in any enterprise conducted upon the Cost Principle. 
Hence again it follows, as stated in the preceding chapter (222), that "whoever 
evinces the highest grades of inventing and organizing talent will have the com- 
mand, freely, of the requisite capital to aid the execution of his designs, limited 
only by the aggregate amount of surplus capital in the community, as compared 
with the number of such beneficent enterprises on foot." 

231. It is nevertheless true that under the operation of these principles there 
are circumstances in which the use of capital is fairly a matter of price. Such is 
the case whenever the capital loaned is not a surplus above present needs, and 
when, consequently, to make the loan at all is to postpone one's own present en- 
joyment, and hence to endure a sacrifice, — to assume cost. It is the same with 
labor done for another at a time when it is an inconvenience to perform it. To 
render this distinction, and also the difference between the operation of true prin- 
ciples and of the present false principles, more obvious, let us assume an illustrative 
case. 

Suppose twenty families of emigrants landing in Oregon. All need houses 
forthwith. But houses for all cannot be built at once. It is assumed, now, that it 
is morally and economically right that those who are willing to give the largest 
amount of their present wealth or future labor for the assistance of the others 
should have their houses built first, that the enhancement of price in consideration 
of credit is in the nature of interest, and hence that interest is right. 

The answer is this: Cost has its positive and negative aspect. It includes, 1. 
Active performance of painful labor ; 2. Passive suffering, sacrifice, deprivation, 
or endurance. Under this second head I legitimately charge a price for the sur- 
render of the use of capital (my labor being also capital), at any time when it 
would be really advantageous to me to use it for myself; but the exact measure of 
the price of such surrender is the amount of that sacrifice, — not the amount of the 
benefit which I shall confer on another by making it. It is legitimate that the 
party who postpones building at a sacrifice to himself for the accommodation of 
another shall charge an enhanced price. So far we seem to go toward admitting 
the basis of interest, which is assumed. This enhancement of price is entirely dif- 
ferent, however, from interest on money, as now in use. Such as it is, it is not 
only entirely harmonious with, but is absolutely demanded by, the Cost Principle, 
the foundation of the charge being the cost or pain endured. 

232. You are right in assuming that, in the case put, an enhanced price should 
be charged. You are wrong in assuming that the measure of that enhanced price 



142 The Science of Society. 

is the amount of present wealth or future labor which the several parties are respec- 
tively willing to give to obtain the accommodation. Those parties will be willing 
to give most who stand most in want of shelter ; in other words, those who would 
suffer most from being unhoused; in other words, again, the weak and feeble, the 
invalid, the unprotected women and children. They are willing to give or promise 
most, because their wants are greatest; in other words, because the value to them 
of comfortable shelter is greater than it is to the robust and enduring. This, then, 
is the value principle, or the supply-and-demand principle, as it is sometimes called, 
— the false principle of commerce which now prevails, — the antipodes of the Cost 
Principle, — the true principle of commerce, which will prevail under the reign of 
Equity. 

233. Let us see now the application of the Cost Principle to the case in hand. 
An enhanced price is to be charged by those who postpone their own accommoda- 
tion, but that enhancement is measured by the amount of sacrifice or inconvenience 
suffered. Consequently the stronger, the healthy, and those most accustomed to 
hardships, will postpone their own accommodation for less augmentation of price 
than others, and the weak and suffering will be housed first, as they ought to be 
morally, and at the cheapest rate, as they ought to be economically. A false principle 
always puts on the guise of a true principle. Hence, both the Value Principle and 
the Cost Principle promise the same thing, and will begin by building the houses 
of those who are in the greatest want first ; but the Value Principle robs the weak 
for whom it builds, during the process, and then builds more magnificently for the 
strong, making hewers of wood and drawers of water of the weak forever after- 
ward. It is again seen, therefore, that the Value, or Supply-and-Demand Principle 
is the essential element of the civilized cannibalism which now prevails, and the 
Cost Principle the essential element of true or harmonic relations among men. 

234. There is still another ground upon which a defence of interest is set up. 
It is said that trees grow, or, in other words, that property has a natural tendency 
to increase, and hence that a smaller amount of property in hand now is, upon 
natural principles, worth as much as a larger amount to come into possession one, 
two, or three years hence, and hence, again, that I ought to receive more in pay- 
ment of a debt which is postponed, which is again in the nature of interest. 

It has been stated that, in the case of a real inconvenience occasioned by a delay, 
a price is equitably paid. That admission does not, however, affect the case now 
put. Cases must be distinguished. It is not true that all wealth increases natu- 
rally by time. Some does so, while other kinds deteriorate. Let us apply the prin- 
ciple, however, to the case of an actual increase. It is a consequence of the Cost 
Principle that natural wealth bears no price; consequently the increase of natural 
wealth bears no increased price. For example : if cattle increase naturally upon 
the open prairie, and no human labor is bestowed upon their care, they are the 
common wealth of all mankind. If a given amount of labor is bestowed upon the. 






Cost the Limit of Price. 143 



care of a drove of one hundred, that amount of labor, or its equivalent, is the 
legitimate price of the drove. If, then, a drove of one hundred and fifty can be 
cared for just as well by the same labor, the legitimate price of the larger drove 
will be precisely the same as that of the smaller, for not value but cost is the limit 
of price. Hence, under the operation of the Cost Principle, there is no sacrifice to me 
in postponing the receipt of property due me on the ground of its prospective 
natural increase, for, if there is no human labor added to produce the increase, the 
price remains the same, and I can at the future day purchase the larger quantity 
at the same rate as I should now give for the smaller. And again, if human labor 
contributes to the increase, then it is not natural or spontaneous increase, and there 
will be an augmentation of price; but in that case the augmentation will be merely 
a precise equivalent for the human labor so bestowed, so that it becomes entirely 
indifferent with me whether I have the property now in possession and bestow up- 
on it the necessary labor myself, or whether it remains in the possession of another, 
who bestows the labor, and to whom, at the expiration of the term, I give merely 
an equivalent, — that is, an equal amount of labor in some other form. Hence, 
while there is, under the auspices of the Value Principle, which now governs pro- 
perty relations, an apparent sacrifice from the postponement of payment on the 
ground of natural increase, there is no ground of sacrifice, and consequently no 
basis for interest, under the Cost Principle. 

235. I anticipate an objection like this. What is said here of natm-al wealth 
supposes an abundance of that species of wealth. What is said of the cattle on 
the prairie may be all right if there are enough cattle for all. But so soon as a 
scarcity occurs, will any one who has possession of a drove divide with others for 
a due proportion of the labor he has bestowed upon it? 

This is a mere question as to what men will do under the pressure of temptation 
to do wrong. It is clear that the only right the individual has to the drove more 
than others results from the labor he has bestowed upon Jt. That makes it his 
property. He can refuse to dispose of it if he requires it for his own use. If he 
does dispose of it, the just measure of price is the amount of labor bestowed. As 
he cannot augment that price, if he acts justly, by retaining it while pressed by 
the wants of others to dispose of it, the temptation to retain more than he requires 
for his own wants is removed. There is no motive left to act against his human- 
ity, and, as humanity is an element in the nature of every man, it will of course 
act to induce him to dispose of what he can spare. 

236. Still the objection is not fully answered without this additional statement. 
It is easy to act upon the true principle, — that is, there is less temptation to deviate 
from it, — just in proportion to the prevalence of general abundance and the com- 
plete adaptation of supply to demand; but, on the other hand, the greater pre- 
valence of abundance and a more perfect adaptation of supply to demand grow 
directly out of the adoption of the principle. The exercise of the principle will 



144 The Science of Society. 

create the atmosphere in which it can itself live with a more and more perfect life. 
A false principle now prevents the development and proper distribution of wealth. 
It is no impeachment of the true principle that, under the pressure of want created 
by the false one, there is a strong temptation to act in turn upon the false instead 
of the true one. 

237. It will be seen, then, that although the Cost Principle allows sometimes of 
an augmentation of price on the ground of a delay of payment, such augmentation 
is quite different from interest on money, as now understood. It is, nevertheless, 
the spice of truth contained in the proposition that delay is a sacrifice which gives 
plausibility to this argument for interest. 

238. Interest differs from any such augmentation of price, 1. Because it re- 
lates to the value or benefit of the accommodation to the receiver, and not to the 
sacrifice or cost to the grantor. 2. Because it goes by rule, and, even when it 
professes to be based on cost, does not individualize the cases of real sacrifice, ap- 
parent sacrifice, and no sacrifice. 3. Because it claims to be based, in part, on the 
natural increase of wealth, whereas all natural wealth, and consequently the in- 
crease of natural wealth, is no legitimate basis of price whatsoever. 

Every one must admit the essential justice of the Cost Principle in its primary 
statement, — namely, that as much burden as you take for my sake so much am I 
bound to take for your sake. The logical consequences of that admission sweep 
all interest out of existence, so far as interest is an admission of the right of cap- 
ital to accumulate more capital, and vindicate the claim of all mankind to the 
equal enjoyment of every species of natural wealth. 

239. The reader must distinguish well between capital itself, and the capacity of 
capital of itself to make additional accumulations. The Cost Principle makes no at- 
tack upon capital. It recognizes capital as the legitimate accumulations of labor. 
It simply denies that capital itself has any legitimate power, when not used by the 
owner, to accumulate,, more capital for him. But what, cries the fat citizen who > 
lives on his rents and whose ideas are steeped in the actual routine of commerce, 
what is the use of capital which produces no income ? It is of use, my good friend, 
simply for the purpose of being used. It is of use in the same manner, and for 
the same purpose, as honey accumulated in the hive is of use to the bees. Honey 
is made for the purpose of being consumed. From the time the bees cease to work, 
their store of wealth, ceasing to augment, begins to decrease. No contrivance has 
ever been hit upon among them by which the honey itself should go on making 
more honey after the bees retired from business. Hence, among bees, the rich do 
not become richer, nor the poor poorer, except in proportion as they work and eat. 
Under the operation of the true principles of industry and commerce the same will 
be true of mankind. Accumulations of wealth will be an object of ambition then, 
as now, because, so long as they last, they will exempt the owner from toil, if he 
chooses to be exempt. The man who has wealth will be in the condition of a man 



Cost the Limit of Price. 145 

who has done his work. He can acquire wealth through his own labor, or through 
donations, bequests, or inheritance from friends. His capital will be invested in 
houses, shops, machinery, improvements upon lands, the Labor Notes of others, in 
everything, in fact, which is legitimately property, precisely as now; but such in- 
vestments will bring him no rents, profits, or interest, as an augmentation of his 
capital. Whatever he withdraws, converts into a consumable shape, and con- 
sumes, will be so far a diminution of his capital stock, as it will be obvious to every 
candid mind that it should. 

240. Let us look a little more specifically into this operation of the principle, 
as relates to the rent of lands and houses, the use of machinery, and the like. We 
have already noticed the effect as relates to the price of land when sold. (82.) 
On the same grounds there stated, and elsewhere illustrated, the rent of lands is 
nothing, provided they are maintained in as good a condition, in all respects, as that 
in which they were when received by him who hires them. If the owner main- 
tains them in that condition, manuring them, fencing them, etc., then the rent is 
the equivalent of the cost of doing so. H the hirer puts the lands in a better con- 
dition than they were in when he received them, the price is due from the owner 
and renter of the lands to him, inverting the present order of payment, and is 
measured by the cost of such augmentation of value. So, if the owner sells the 
lands, it will be remembered that the price is the cost of the successive augmenta- 
tions of value upon the soil since the land was in its natural state, and which still 
remain with it. Hence it follows that not only is all speculation in land extin- 
guished, but along with it all temptation to monopolize the soil. There is no ad- 
vantage in owning land which one does not want for his present uses, except 
this, — that one may foresee the probability of his requiring a particular lot for 
his subsequent private occupation, and may, for that reason, desire to retain the 
control of it, or rather the right which ownership confers to resume the control of 
it at a future time. The ownership of the disposable improvements or augmented 
value upon the soil may also be as convenient an investment for one's surplus 
wealth as any other, since that can at any time be converted, by sale, into consum- 
able property, to supply his wants. On the other hand, there is no advantage on 
the part of him who cultivates land in owning the land over hiring it of another, 
except in the permanency of his tenure. As a mere tenant, he may be required to 
remove at the expiration of his term for the convenience of another, but, so far as 
the profitableness of his occupancy is concerned, it is precisely the same whether 
he owns or hires. 

241. As relates to the hiring of houses and structures of all sorts, the operation 
of the principle is the same. The rent is a mere equivalent of cost to the wear 
and tear of the premises. If the tenant keeps them in thorough repair, so that 
there is no depreciation of value, the rent is zero. If, on the other hand, the dete- 
rioration is suffered to go on, the annual amount of that deterioration, as averaged 



146 The Science of Society. 

upon the term which the property may last, is the annual rent, so that when the 
property is worn out the owner will have received a full equivalent for it, and have 
kept his capital good by other investments, or have consumed it in supplying his 
own wants. Suppose, for example, a house upon a money calculation (all such 
calculations will be finally resolved into hours of labor or pounds of corn) costs 
ten thousand dollars, and is estimated to be capable of lasting two hundred years ; 
the annual rent of it will then be fifty dollars per annum. The owner of such a 
building will then have an annual income of fifty dollars per annum in addition to 
his earnings from his own labor, which he will consume if he chooses, and at the 
expiration of the terlm of two hundred years the' whole will be exhausted. If he 
owns such a property, and wishes to consume it more rapidly, he can sell it to such 
persons as wish to preserve their capital, and use up the proceeds. It follows that 
the more permanent the structure the less the rent, so that buildings capable of 
defying the inroads of time — stone structures and the like, for example — will 
command no rent at all. Still this is perfectly harmonious, since such edifices are 
a safe means of investing capital, which really earns nothing let it be invested 
where it may, and which can be reconverted at any time into consumable property 
by sale. Where capital earns nothing, selling is just as advantageous as renting, 
since renting is really selling piecemeal instead of in the gross. Hence, under 
those circumstances, it is no objection to the purchaser who has capital to invest 
that the stone house will bring no rent. 

242. But it may be objected that, if persons were able to hire stone houses free 
of rent, they would not hire others of a more perishable material. Clearly not, if 
there were enough of the more permanent ones to supply the demand. If there 
were nearly enough, the less permanent and consequently more expensive ones 
would be less rentable and less saleable, and would therefore offer a less secure in- 
vestment for the capitalist. Hence, again, the tendency of this operation of the 
principle is to force the capitalist to build indestructible edifices, and, finally, to 
house the whole population free of rent. Is that consummation to be deplored? 
But at that point, urges the objector, houses cease to be saleable; hence they cease 
to be property convertible into consumable products, and there will no longer be 
any motive with the possessor of surplus wealth to construct houses at all. Pre- 
cisely so. But that point is just the point at which all the houses that are required 
by the whole people have been already built. Is there any calamity in ceasing to 
provide a supply when there is no longer any demand? It will be high time, then, 
that surplus capital shall be invested in other provisions for human wants, in loans 
to genius for the working out of new designs, and the like. There need be no fear, 
with the ever-rising scale of luxury and refinement, that there will occur any glut 
of the aggregate demand for such surplus accumulations. 

243. The operation of the principle is again the same with reference to machin- 
ery, and hence the Cost Principle settles triumphantly, as nothing else can, this, 






Cost the Limit of Price. 147 

the most vexatious question perhaps of modern economical science. The machine 
earns nothing. The capital invested in it is merely kept good for the owner. 
The dividend due to the machine is solely the wear and tear of the machine. 
Hence machinery ceases to work against the laborer, and begins to work exclu- 
sively for him. Every member of community comes at once to participate equally 
in all the advantages of every labor-saving process. Wealth has no longer any 
monopoly of those advantages. Cost beiug the limit of price, the price of every 
product is reduced to every purchaser by just so much as the cost of its production 
is diminished by the aid of machinery. Hence machinery, like competition, now 
the enemy of the laborer, will be converted into his cooperating servant and most 
efficient benefactor. (159, 163, 208.) 

211. I must not omit, before closing this chapter, to notice the remaining 
ground upon which the habit of paying interest on money, and consequently rent 
on capital, now rests, and along with it the power of capital over labor, — namely, 
the scarcity and expensiveuess of the circulating medium hitherto in use. There 
is not enough of the so-called precious metals to serve the purposes of commerce 
as a proper medium of exchange, their intrinsic value and insufficient supply mak- 
ing them the subjects of monopoly in the hands of the money-dealers. This point 
has been already adverted to, and the remedy shown to be the substitution of the 
Labor Note. (77.) 

215. It will be appropriate now also to say a few words in relation to the ca- 
pacity of the individual Labor Note to expand into a general system of currency. 
As that capacity depends somewhat upon the prevalence of confidence consequent 
upon a general habit of honesty in the community, it could not be so favorably 
presented until the power of the Cost Principle in operation, to engender that 
habit, had been previously shown. 

2-16. In every small community in which the Labor Note is used, there will be 
very soon some one individual whose notes will come rnore into use than those of 
others, — the storekeeper, for example, in the village. It will be safe for him to 
issue Labor Notes to any extent which he can redeem in his own labor, in goods 
from his shelves, or in the Labor Notes of others. His business will bring him 
continually into possession of the Labor Notes of all his customers, — at first only 
in payment for his own labor in serving them, — the cash cost of the goods being 
paid in cash, — but, finally, with the extension of the system which we are now 
supposing, for the original cost of the goods as well. Having these notes in pos- 
session, it will be the same thing whether he puts them in circulation, or whether 
he puts his own notes in circulation for an equal amount and retains those of his 
customers as the means of redemption. Convenience will be in favor of the latter 
method, so far as it shall be found in practice to be safe; which will be in propor- 
tion to the growth of the general habit of honesty; which will be again in exact 
proportion to the general adoption of the Cost Principle as the governing prin- 



148 The Science of Society. 

ciple of commerce. Wherever the honesty of the storekeeper can be entirely relied 
upon, guarded as it will be by the usage of keeping his books entirely open at all 
times to the inspection of the public, the practice may grow up of each inhabitant 
of the village exchanging Labor Notes with him for as much currency as he re- 
quires for his own use, and issuing the notes of the storekeeper instead of his own. 
In this manner the storekeeper becomes the village banker, and makes out and 
signs all the currency in use in his neighborhood, and, as the doing so becomes a 
burden, charges the cost upon every issue. By this means the detail of each per- 
son's signing and issuing his own notes will be finally avoided, and the banking of 
the village surrendered into the hands of one person. Every movement should 
begin, however, for safety, in general individual banking, much in the same man- 
ner as it will be found expedient and cheaper in practice, in the early stages of ex- 
periment under the Cost Principle, to go back to the manufacture by hand of 
many articles which are manufactured outside by the aid of machinery, and in- 
trinsically, of course, at a much cheaper rate. 

247. The system of banking in Labor Notes by the wholesale, or by one indi- 
vidual for a village, neighborhood, or other community, thus begun, may be ex- 
tended to the larger towns, and finally to the cities. In the large towns and cities, 
instead of the business being a mere appendage to the store or post-office, it will 
become an independent branch of business by itself, — the banker issuing his own 
notes against those of smaller country bankers held in deposit, as theirs in turn 
are issued against those of a still smaller class deposited with them, and these 
again finally against the primary notes of the citizens generally. The notes of the 
metropolitan bankers will then become a national currency, issued without interest, 
to the whole community, and at no expense beyond the cost of the mere labor in- 
volved in each exchange or issue. 

248. It is obvious that such a system of banking is only adapted to a state of 
society in which there is a high state of confidence in individual good faith. It 
will be equally obvious, however, to every reader who has rightly apprehended the 
drift of this treatise, that such a condition of society will be the legitimate result 
of the application of right principles. It will be alike obvious to every one who 
reflects that no true order of society can exist — the problem to be worked out — 
while bad faith and general dishonesty remain. The system of currency here 
slightly developed is adapted to society expurgated of those elements. Its benefits 
are immense. The fact that we cannot participate in them now may serve to re- 
mind us of the sacrifice we incur by adhering to principles which beget mutual 
overreaching and bad faith as their legitimate progeny. 

249. We come, finally, to the consideration of the much-abused " Wages Sys- 
tem," to escape which Social Keformers of all schools have proposed rushing into 
combinations of interest of some sort, to the destruction, as we have seen, of indi- 
vidual sovereignty and freedom. The concrete of our existing labor and com- 



Cost the Limit of PHce. 149 

mercial arrangements is felt to be disharmonic and oppressive ; hence every feature 
of it is liable to be denounced in turn, in the absence of correct scientific discrim- 
ination between what is fundamentally right and wrong in the system. It is in 
consequence of this liability that Individuality has fallen into disrepute among 
Reformers, as if in it were the essential element of discord, whereas it has been 
shown that Individuality is the sole basis of all harmonic adjustment. In like 
manner the relation of employer and employed is stigmatized daily as vicious in 
itself, and the ideal is entertained of each individual being so employed as to be 
his own "boss," to use the language of the trades, and to work solely for himself. 
No such arrangement is either desirable or feasible. It is not all men who are 
made for designers, contrivers, and directors. That is perhaps one of the most 
exact generalizations of mankind into classes by which they are divided into Ori- 
ginators, Organizers, and Executors. The first are least numerous, the second more 
numerous, and the last most numerous. It is right that those who originate 
should impress themselves on the execution of their designs, either directly, or 
through the intervention of the organizing class. Naturally each is content with 
the performance of his own function, according to his organization. The few only 
will desire to lead; the mass of mankind will prefer to follow, so soon as an equal- 
ity of rewards renders it alike honorable either to follow or to lead. 

250. It is, then, a natural relation that one man should employ another to aid 
him in actualizing his design; that he who has a design to execute should adjoin 
to himself the labor of him who has none, or no other one than that of securing 
the means of his own subsistence in circumstances of personal comfort. For that 
purpose — the execution of the design — they Jwo enter into a combination, while 
in interest they are still individual and distinct, — the interest of one being in his 
design, and that of the other in the wages he is to earn. But every combined 
movement demands an individual lead. Hence, in the execution of the design, 
the one must guide and the other follow, and the more absolute the submission of 
the one mind to the other, the more harmonious the movement. Hence, it is pro- 
per and right that one man should hire another, and, if he hires hi.n, it is proper 
and right that he should remunerate him for his labor, and such remuneration is 
wages. Hence, it follows that the "Wages System" is essentially proper and 
right. It is right that one man employ another, it is right that he pay him wages, 
and it is right that he direct him absolutely, arbitrarily, if you will, in the perform- 
ance of his labor, while, on the other hand, it is the business of him who is em- 
ployed implicitly to obey, — that is, to surrender any will of his own in relation to 
a design not his own, and to conceive and execute the will of the other. 

251. The wrong of our existing system is not, then, to be sought in Individual- 
ism, it is not to be sought in the want of Cooperation, except as that grows to 
some extent out of the want of Equity, nor is it to be sought in the relation of 
employer and employed. It is right that the great manufacturer should plan, aud 



150 The Science of Society. 

either alone, or through the aid of assistants under his direction, organize his 
manunoth establishment. It is right that he should employ and direct his hundred 
or his five hundred men. It is not true that those men do not even now cooperate 
with each other and with him, as it is right and proper that they should. (52.) 
It is right that he should pay them wages for their work. It is not in any, nor in 
all of these features combined, that the wrong of our present system is to be sought 
for and found. It is in the simple failure to do Equity. It is not that men are em- 
ployed and paid, but that they are not paid Justly, and that no measure of Justice 
or Equity has ever heretofore been known among men. 

252. When all avenues are alike open to you and me, there is no hardship in 
the fact that I, having no genius for great enterprises, or preferring to avoid the 
responsible charge of them, choose freely to labor under your direction for the exe- 
cution of your designs. It is a great hardship, however, if I am first forced into 
that position by a system of labor and wealth which leaves me no election, and 
then robbed, by the operation of the same system, of one half or two thirds of my 
earnings, for your benefit. In the large establishment, such as we are now con- 
templating, conducted on the Cost Principle, the proprietor will realize no more in 
the form of pecuniary results from the undertaking than the humblest laborer 
employed by him, unless he works harder, and not so much if he does not work so 
hard, — taking into account all the elements of labor or repugnance, both physical 
and mental. 

253. But who, if the temptations of profit-making were removed, would assume 
the responsibility and burden of devising, organizing, and conducting an extensive 
and complicated business concern ? The question is thoughtlessly asked, and dic- 
tated by the control which old associations have over the mind. In the first place, 
the burden and responsibility, precisely such as they are, more or less, to the 
individual who thus assumes a leading position, as compared with the disagree- 
ableness of other occupations as estimated by himself solely, are the limit of the 
reward of his function. The greater the burden the greater the price. The Cost 
Principle does not pronounce, arbitrarily, that the couductor of the large and com- 
plicated business shall be paid a very low price for his labor. It merely decides 
that he shall be paid according to the relative degree of repugnance of that kind of 
occupation, as judged of by himself, — subject to no other checks than those which 
are supplied by his own conscience, and the competition of others who may deem 
it less repugnant than he. Hence, if that kind of occupation actually imposes an 
intrinsic burden ten times or one hundred times as great as mere executive labor, 
then the principle accompanies us quite out to that point, and gives to him who 
serves in that capacity ten or one hundred times as much price as to the ordinary 
laborer. The principle holds good wherever it conducts; but the result will be, 
in fact, far otherwise. There are men who are organized for the lead of large and 
complicated enterprises, to whom positions demanding great powers of mental 



Cost the Limit of Price. 151 

combination, and devolving heavy responsibilities, are the most attractive. By 
such, such positions will be filled at a pecuniary price less rather than more than 
will be awarded to labors less flattering to the tastes and to the ambition for lead- 
ing and responsible posts. 

254. There is a class of Communist Reformers to whom this whole discussion 
relating to price will be distasteful. They wish to be rid of price altogether. 
They aspire to arrive, by a short cut, at a condition of society in which labor shall 
be solely according to attractions, and supply only measured by the wants of the 
individual. That ideal has in it, doubtless, a partial prophecy of the truth. It is, 
however, like the poiut of no friction in machinery, — a point always to be aimed 
at, and continually approximated, but never absolutely attained. The tendency 
to a modified practical communism will develop itself in proportion to the relaxa- 
tion of the hold of the individual upon private property or possession, which will 
be again in proportion to the prevalence of general abundance. The effect of the 
Cost Principle will be to augment the general wealth by means of the Economies, 
Attractive Industry, and a more perfect Cooperation; hence the tendency of the 
Cost Principle, in operation, will be toward the extinguishment of all price. Price 
being according to repugnance, it will constantly decrease with the more attractive 
conditions of industry until, if the point be ever attained at which all labor shall 
be done from pure attraction, price will cease altogether. Hence, in so far as the 
Communist has faith in the possibility of attaining the conditions, may he have 
faith in that result. The Cost Principle begins with us, then, in the midst of re- 
pugnant labor as it now is, and does Equity there. It accompanies us with the 
decrease of repugnance and renders the price less, and finally it attends us quite 
out to the ideal point of pure attraction and the cessation of all price. It is the 
mistake of the Communist to assume that the goal has been attained, or that it is 
possible to attain it by any sudden leap, avoiding the intermediate steps. 

255. Still it is important to observe that the absence of price is not the ab- 
sence of ownership, which last is confusion. Hence, the Cost Principle never lands 
in Communism in that sense. All property will still belong to individual owners, 
who will exercise absolute rights over it — as an essential condition of order — 
even though a price be not demanded. Take an illustration. A drink of water, 
a pin, or a wafer is not now ordinarily a subject of price, as articles of more con- 
siderable value will not be with greater abundance, and still they belong to indi- 
vidual owners. You will take a wafer from my desk without even consulting me. 
It is not worth my while to assert my ownership. But if on doing so repeatedly 
you render yourself offensive by puffing tobacco smoke in my face, or otherwise, I 
fall back upon my right of property, and refuse you the accommodation. 

256. In conclusion, it will strike the judicious reader that the Cost Principle 
is wonderfully searching, subtle, and exact; that it marks the line with precision 
between what is right and what is wrong in the present system, aud between 



152 The Science of Society. 

what is right and what is wrong in all the proposed systems of Social Re- 
form; that it is eclectic and discriminating; that it combines, in fine, the sim- 
plicity of fundamental truth in its primary statement with that minuteness of 
application to the most ramified details which entitle it to the appellation of a 
Universal Principle. 



The £hj>. 



Appendix. 153 



APPENDIX. 



I. 

A REVIEW. 



EQUITABLE COMMERCE. A New Development of Principles, Proposed as Ele- 
ments of New Society. By Josiah Warren. 12 mo. pp. 117. Fowlers & Wells.* 

This is a new and enlarged edition of the original work on Social Science which 
has furnished its present editor, Mr. S. P. Andrews, with the basis for the views 
which he has set forth with so much force of argument and felicity of illustration 
in his recent publications, entitled "The True Constitution of Government" and 
"Cost the Limit of Price." ' Of the profound importance which he attaches to the 
alleged discoveries of Mr. Warren no one can doubt after reading the preface to 
this volume. He announces it as "one of the most remarkable ever printed, — a 
condensed presentation of the most fundamental principles of Social Science ever 
yet discovered." He does not "hesitate to affirm that there is more scientific' 
truth, positively new to the world, and immensely important in its bearings upon 
the destiny of mankind, contained in it than was ever before consigned to the 
same number of pages." It is the deep conviction of the truth of their system 
which is cherished both by Mr. Warren and Mr. Andrews, we are willing to own, 
which has awakened our interest in the subject, rather than any sympathy with 
its methods or any faith in its pretensions. We have an inborn catholicity of 
taste for everything which claims to be a scientific improvement, and can never re- 
pudiate a theory which challenges our acceptance on rational grounds without first 
endeavoring to look at it in the point of view in which it is presented. Indeed, 
we hold it the duty of every free mind to exercise a large hospitality to novel sys- 
tems, in proportion to the scorn and neglect which they are likely to experience at 
the hands of a timid and unreasoning conservatism. In the present case we can 
not better show our appreciation of the ability and genuine devotion to social pro- 
gress displayed in this little volume than by the perfect frankness with which we 
shall criticise its claims. 

*This review, and the reply from Mr. Andrews which follows it, appeared originally in the New 
York " Tribune." The review is supposed to have been written by George Ripley, a prominent dis- 
ciple of Fourier and at one time president of the Brook Farm Association. 



154 Appendix. 

One of the two leading principles to which the work is devoted receives our 
hearty concurrence. This is the establishment of individual sovereignty as the 
object of social organization. A variety of forcible considerations, in support of 
the position, are brought forward by Mr. Warren. But on this point his views 
cannot pretend to novelty. They have, perhaps, never been more admirably stated 
than by Mr. Andrews in his treatise on "Government "; but they more or less dis- 
tinctly pervade the writings of all who have perceived the superiority of man to his 
accidents. In our opinion the guarantee of individual rights is the paramount ob- 
ject of reform. Our zeal for the masses is based on a sense of the individual injus- 
tice which arises from the usurpation of privilege. The most complete development 
of humanity in all its parts, all its members, all its fragments, is as much the purpose 
of a true social order as the most perfect action of the productive elements of the 
earth and atmosphere is the aim of a true system of agriculture. It is the inspiration 
of this idea which has prompted the efforts of every wise social reformer, and most 
emphatically of Charles Fourier, the most philosophical, the most profound, and the 
most comprehensive of all teachers of social science in the nineteenth century. 
We quarrel with the present order of society because it enslaves the man to insti- 
tutions, subjects the masses (the aggregate of individuality) to oppressive and 
crushing influences, keeps the noblest elements of humanity in a state of slumber 
or paralysis, leaves no scope to the various manifestations of genius, reduces the 
people to a dead level of custom and fashion, and absolutely deprives myriads of 
the living, breathing, aspiring beings, who bear the impress of creative Deity on 
their natures, of the essential conditions of physical health, spiritual culture, inte- 
rior harmony, and glorious beatitude, which is implied in the Christian verity 
that man is made in the image of God. 

The development and sovereignty of the individual is a chimera without the 
possession of property. The universal instinct which dreads poverty as the crown- 
ing terror of life is a genuine impulse of nature. If in one sense it is true that the 
rich man cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it is equally true in another sense 
that the Kingdom of Heaven cannot enter within the soul of the poor man. He is 
shut out from the command of himself, which is the essential foundation of ce- 
lestial felicity. He cannot do what he will with his own ; for he has neither choice 
nor ownership. He is under bondage to the external world, to society, to his own 
physical wants. His very selfhood is eaten out of him by the canker of sharp ne- 
cessity and inexorable care. He has no guarantee that he can find a place to lay 
his head, for houses and lands are monopolized. He may be in want of food to 
eat, for the silver and gold are no longer the Lord's, nor the cattle on a thousand 
hills, but have become the prey of the strong, and the shrewd, and the ungodly. 
Even the right to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow depends on the con- 
venience of capital, which may be the least in need of his work when he most 
wants something to eat. Still less has he any chance of attaining the spiritual 



Appendix. 155 

culture and harmony which are the birthright of man, the golden fruitage of affec- 
tion and hope, the enchantments of poetry, the charms of divine philosophy, the 
ample revelations of science, and the serene grandeur of thought and feeling in- 
spired by the consciousness of an ever-present God. Alas ! he is the first to lose 
the sentiment of humanity amid the dismal shades of ignorance and the blind 
terrors of superstition. 

Hence we maintain that man cannot be a man without property. He cannot 
be his own without an outward owndom. He cannot be master of his soul without 
first being master of external nature. If he would be an individual, he must also 
be a proprietor. In fact, this is involved in the very significance of the terms. If 
the individual is divided off (individualized), he must possess something peculiar, 
proper to himself (proprium, property), or he might as well be lost in the mass. 

Socialism, accordingly, which aims to make all society a body of proprietors, — 
giving each man the ownership of everything essential to his development, — es- 
tablishes the Sovereignty of the Individual. 

The whole course of political progress tends to the same result. He must be 
stone-blind who*does not see that the revolutionary spirit of the age is a struggle 
for Individual Sovereignty, — for the inauguration of man in the power and glory 
of universal humanity. This tendency is apparent from the progress of history, 
and its successive gradations may be easily traced to their first principles in human 
nature. 

In a state of society where brute force and cunning are the prominent features, 
monarchy is the natural, perhaps the inevitable order. The sovereignty of one 
man usurps the sovereignty of the people. The will of the masses, and, of course, 
the will of the individuals composing the masses, is lost in the will of the despot. 
The sentiment of humanity is absorbed in the possession of power. A step in ad- 
vance is gained by the development of aristocracy. The sovereignty is claimed by 
a privileged few, to whom the masses are subservient instead of to the monarchy. 
But here is a step toward the diffusion of privilege. The one-man power has 
yielded to the power of the magnates. Humanity, however, is far from its goal. 
The will of "the dear God who loveth all" is not yet accomplished. Democracy 
must be established, proclaiming equality against privilege, the people against the 
aristocracy, the masses against classes, man against men. But the practical work- 
ing of democracy effects only the sovereignty of the majority. Taking power from 
the few, who had seized it from the monarch (the one-man power), it gives it to 
the many. But with all its pretensions democracy does not emancipate the 
masses. The Sovereignty of the Individual has not yet arrived, because the 
majority to a great extent ignores the interests of the minority, and the majority 
of today may become the minority of tomorrow. Hence democracy does not gua- 
rantee the rights of universal humanity ; hence it is but a stepping-stone to better 
(things to come ; and hence a new and larger development in the cycle of the ages 



156 Appendix. 

is as certain as that man has been made partaker of an infinite nature. The last 
step is the emancipation of humanity by inaugurating the Sovereignty of the In- 
dividual. This is the object of Socialism, or at least that form of Socialism which 
is better known as Association. The Socialist or Associative idea of human so- 
ciety is not monarchy, the sovereignty of one man, nor aristocracy, the sovereignty 
of a privileged class, nor democracy, the sovereignty of a majority for the time be- 
ing, but humanity, or the integral Sovereignty of the Individual. 

This, as we have stated, is a prominent thesis of the present work. But it is not 
so original as the author seems to suppose. It underlies, more or less definitely 
expressed, the great humanitary movement, the instinct of which gave such a fer- 
vent inspiration to Rousseau, which found a devoted apostle in Herder, which 
softened the arid formulas of Kant and Fichte by the promise of a glorious future 
for the race, which has blended with the highest philosophy and poetry of the pre- 
sent age, which has fired the master-spirits of the world with quenchless fervor, 
and which, in another form, is now everywhere at work in the hearts of the people, 
and with "fear of change perplexing monarchs." Among social reformers by pro- 
fession St. Simon and Fourier regarded the Sovereignty of the Individual as the 
ultimate end of a true social order. Differing from each other and from the au- 
thor of this volume as to the methods of its attainment, they agree in the su- 
premacy of man over institutions as the true destiny of the race. The same idea 
has been elaborated, we ne"ed not say, with rare force of logic and eloquence, by 
our friend Henry James ; and, though less directly and consciously, is the dominant 
thought in the most valuable writings of Dr. Channing and Theodore Parker. 
We do not call in question the fact that Mr. Warren has drawn his system from 
his own mind. In that sense his claim to originality will stand good. There is 
no reason to suppose that he owes it to foreign suggestion. But he exaggerates 
his own share in its promulgation. He is by no means the exclusive herald of an 
idea with which the age is fermenting. 

We have said that the possession of property is essential to the sovereignty of 
the individual. In this statement we find the refutation of Mr. Warren's second 
principle, that "Cost is the Limit of Price." According to this theory, equal 
amounts of labor are made to balance each other, without regard to the value of 
the product. Equitable Commerce, it maintains, is the exchange of the results of 
equal labor, as virtual equivalents. A commodity which has cost you the labor of 
an hour is to be exchanged on equal terms for one that has cost me labor to the 
same amount of time, irrespective of the utility of the product to either party. 

Now we utterly fail to perceive the connection of this principle, with that of the 
sovereignty of the individual. On the contrary, we are persuaded that they are in 
irreconcilable antagonism. 

The sovereignty of the individual is secured only by the guarantee of individual 
property. Universal freedom depends on universal ownership. But the right of 



Appendix. 157 

property is based ou the right of the individual to the products of his labor. If 
there is an intuitive principle in the science of society, it is this. Just in propor- 
tion as this uatural right is set aside, the individual loses one of the most impor- 
tant elements of sovereignty. We do not say that an individual, or a society of 
individuals, may not waive their exercise of this right, for the sake of another 
order of considerations. For instance, I yield the rigid application of the prin- 
ciple, in behalf of social charity. I assent to the arrangement by which a portion 
of the products of my labor is assigned to the child, the sick, the infirm, the aged ; 
but this is a voluntary act in obedience to my conviction, that the strong ought to 
share the burden of the weak. It is not enforced by the law of natural justice, in 
the distribution of products, but adopted as the dictate of benevolent sentiment. 
Or I may belong to an industrial association, consisting of various branches of 
industry, and organized on the plan of dividing the aggregate product of labor, 
according to the amount performed, instead of allowing each individual to enjoy 
the actual, specific product of his labor. But this, again, is a voluntary abdication 
of a natural right in the interests of social unity. It is prompted by the sentiment 
of friendship, a desire for an equality surpassing that of nature, or by other mo- 
tives, no matter what. No one can pretend that it is the result of a scientific 
analysis of the methods of industrial repartition. In like manner, I can conceive 
of a society founded on the principle of "Cost the Limit of Price," as laid down in 
this volume; and though I should not be sanguine of its success in producing 
integral harmony, it might be attended with advantages so far superior to the 
present order, as to justly challenge a fair trial for the experiment. But this 
admission does not countenance the scientific accuracy of the principle; for which 
we find no valid reason set forth by the author, and which, in our opinion, is at war 
with the natural right of the individual to the products of his labor. 

It follows from this right that my title to the products of my labor is good 
against the world. No man gave it to me, and no man can take it from me. It 
is not the result of any legislation of monarch, parliament, or congress, not deter- 
mined by the vote of any majority, but the enactment of the supreme and divine 
law inherent in the organization of my nature. But if the product of my labor is 
my own, no one can decide the terms on which I shall part with it but myself. 
The right of exchanging it at pleasure is involved in the right of ownership. The 
attempt to establish a compulsory law for this purpose is a gross violation of my 
acknowledged sovereignty. This view, we think, is fatal to the theory in question, 
apart from the practical inconveniences that would arise from its application. 

We have admitted that the right of the individual to the products of his labor 
may be set aside or suspended by arrangements to which he gives his voluntary 
assent. But this does not militate with the scientific validity of the principle. 
In Communism — of which Mr. Warren's system is one form, in spite of its pre- 
tensions to exclusive individualism — it is renounced in favor of equal distribution, 



158 Appendix. 

for the sake of absolute equality. Integrating the society as one man, Commun- 
ism distributes the aggregate products to the aggregate mass. In Association — 
which, be it well understood, is heaven-wide from Communism — the principle is 
waived in favor of a graduated distribution of products, for the sake of integral 
harmony, proceeding from graduated inequality. In the system of Mr. Warren, 
which makes "Cost the Limit of Price," the principle is renounced in favor of an 
arbitrary arrangement, which, as far as we can see, has no foundation but in the 
fancy of its inventor. If, in one hour, A produces an article which has ten times 
the value — measured by its adaptation to supply human wants — of one produced 
in the same time by B, the parties are bound to exchange them, if exchanged at all, 
on perfectly equal terms. The absolute ownership of the article is thus destroyed, 
by an arbitrary restriction on the process of exchange. Could there be a more 
flagrant violation of the Sovereignty of the Individual? 

Mr. Warren argues that, making value the limit of price is identical with the 
maxim of trade, that a thing is worth what it will bring, and that hence it is pro- 
ductive of all the evils due to the "system of civilized cannibalism by which the 
masses of human beings are mercilessly ground to powder for the accumulation of 
the wealth of the few." But this is a fallacy, arising from losing sight of the 
distinction between mercantile value and absolute value. The mercantile value 
of a commodity is quite a different thing from its absolute value. The former is 
determined by several external elements; the latter, by intrinsic qualities. The 
mercantile value, or the market price of an article, depends on the law of demand 
and supply, on the prevalence of speculation, on the plenty or scarcity of money, 
and numerous other conditions irrespective of its absolute value. This is decided 
by the adaptation of the article to the satisfaction of human wants. Setting aside 
the mercantile value, then, as factitious, we contend that the adjustment of price, 
according to absolute value, as one element in the problem,' is necessary to the 
maintenance of Individual Sovereignty. The product being the property of the 
producer, and its value dependent on its intrinsic qualities, his natural right is 
defeated by limiting its price to the cost of production. This must be one element, 
it is true; but another, and one equally essential, is its absolute value. From 
these elements the price must be decided by the agreement of the parties. A 
basket of strawberries and a vase of flowers may be produced by the same amount 
of labor, but it does not follow that they are exchangeable values ; their relation 
must depend on the tastes of the parties in the trade ; if I am willing to give three 
baskets of strawberries for a vase of flowers, or three hours of my labor for one of 
yours, it is an equitable transaction, and no arbitrary arrangement can prevent it 
without infringing the liberty of the Individual. 

The reverse of this is implied in Mr. Warren's system, and the presence of this 
fallacy vitiates much of his reasoning. If the same amount of labor, in different 
cases, does not produce the same product, it follows that unequal products must 



Appendix. 159 

be exchanged on equal terms. At first blush this is contrary to equity. Nor does 
Mr. Warren succeed in making out a reconciliation. He says, indeed, that the 
genius, skill, facility of execution, or what not, which makes the labor of one man 
more productive than another, is a natural gift, and must be paid like all the gifts 
of nature, that is to say, not paid at all. But this is begging the question. Genius 
and skill are no less indispensable elements of production than muscular force, and 
no scientific reason, as far as we know, has ever been alleged, why the latter should 
receive remuneration and not the former. If the agencies of production are to be 
remunerated at all, why should not the whole of them be remunerated? On what 
principle is the selection made? Shall the brute force which is devoted to labor be 
entitled to the product, while the skill which directs and utilizes that force is 
deprived of its share? This, it seems to us, so far from sustaining Individual 
Sovereignty, tramples it under foot. The Communists say that the products of 
labor shall be distributed, not according to the amount of labor, but equally, 
irrespective of labor, or at least, if a difference is made, it shall be according to 
the wants of the individual, not according to his industry. Very well. This may 
be benevolent, but it is not scientific. It proceeds from the law of friendship, not 
from that of distributive justice. Mr. Warren, while claiming to sustain indivi- 
duality, approaches Communism, which is the grave of individuality. The Com- 
munists set aside all the elements of production as the basis of remuneration. 
Mr. Warren sets aside all but one element, and yet claims to be at the antipodes 
of Communism. The Communists are consistent at the expense of individuality; 
Mr. Warren saves individuality at the expense of his consistency. 

"So much of your labor as I take," says Mr. Warren, "so much of my labor 
must I give." But suppose that one hour of your labor gives a product of ten 
times the intrinsic value of mine, shall I pretend that an hour of my labor is an 
equivalent for an hour of yours? Who is to reap the benefit of the difference in 
value — the individual producer, or the great body of producers? If you say the 
individual producer, you renounce the principle that cost is the limit of price. If 
you say the great body of producers, you take the ground of the Communists. 
But this is to surrender both the principle of individuality and that of the scienti- 
fic distribution of products. 

"Every individual should sustain as much of the common burden as is sustained 
by anybody on his account." True ; but how is the share of the burden to be mea- 
sured? By the time of labor, says Mr. W., including its difficulty and disagree- 
ableness. By the useful effect of labor, says the common sense of mankind, except 
in the Communists, who sacrifice distributive justice to the sentiment of friendship. 
Suppose a field of grain is to be harvested, where the growth is uniform, as well as 
the facility of labor; does the skilful reaper fail to sustain his share of the labor, 
because he accomplishes as much in one day as the bungler does in two? If he 
performs an equal amount of work, shall he not take his own time for its perfor- 



160 Ajypendix. 

mance? On Mr. Warren's theory, the skilful reaper and the bungler must work 
through the same length of time, without regard to the useful effect of their labor, 
in order equally to discharge their obligations to each other. But this is sheer 
C ommunism, since it deprives the individual of the fruit of his labor for the bene- 
fit of the mass. 

It will be seen that we regard Mr. Warren's theory of "Equitable Commerce" 
as a failure. We have no space to indicate more fully the objections to which it 
is liable. Instead of making " Cost the Limit of Price," we would carry into effect 
the great natural law of giving the producer the ownership of his products. The 
neglect of this is at the foundation of slavery, pauperism, crime, and the myriads 
of social evils which the philanthropist deplores, and which it is the function of 
social science to remedy. Let the products of labor, in all cases, be guaranteed to 
the producer; and the material condition of individual sovereignty will be fulfilled. 
This principle should be made the basis of all plans for social reform; and when 
it is wisely applied we shall see the "new Heaven and a new Earth," which is pro- 
mised by the divinest instincts of man, and to doubt of which would be practical 
Atheism. 



Appendix. 161 



REPLY TO THE TRIBUNE BY MR. ANDREWS. 

To the Editor of the New York Tribune: 

You recently bestowed three columns and a half upon a notice of "Equitable 
Commerce; a New Development of Principles Proposed as Elements of New So- 
ciety," by Josiah Warren, with an incidental notice of " The True Constitution of 
Government" and "Cost the Limit of Price" — works upon the same general sub- 
ject — "The Science of Society" — by myself. The criticism may be regarded as 
relating to the circle of principles advocated by Mr. Warren and myself rather than 
to either of us simply as writers, and hence I feel authorized to step aside from 
usage so far as to reply to the criticism, the conclusion arrived at, which I cannot 
but think an unfortunate one for you, being that Mr. Warren's theory of "Equitable 
Commerce " is a failure. 

The books in question are not of the kind that can be profitably reviewed with- 
out being attentively read. The hurry and clatter of newspaper machinery are 
not, I am aware, favorable to the weighty consideration of those profound philo- 
sophical truths which lie much below the surface. If a critic, under such circum- 
stances, should fail, therefore, fully to grasp the significance of a circle of principles 
so revolutionary, and yet so simple, so perfectly harmonious in their relations to 
each other, so absolutely indispensable each to the working out of the other, and so 
thoroughly responsive to every demand of exalted human aspiration after Social 
Order and Freedom and Harmony, it should not be charged on him as a defect of 
acumen, or of sympathetic affinity for truth, but merely to the want of opportunity. 

You accept and adopt the first of this circle of principles, "The Sovereignty of 
the Individual," but simply put in a caveat against the claim of exclusive original- 
ity on the part of Mr. Warren. This question of originality is one of little im- 
portance, and one to which no man would attach less consequence than Mr. 
Warren himself. The important question is, "Is it true?" and on this we agree. 
Nevertheless, it is, after all, likewise simply true that Mr. Warren is the first man 
in the world clearly to define this idea as a Principle, instead of a vague aspiration, 
to fix it in a Formula, to settle its Legitimate Limitation, to propound it as one of 
the Grand Practical Solutions of the Social Problem, and to connect it with its Cor- 
related Principles in this solution. It is true that the idea, simply as such, has 
" more or less distinctly " pervaded the writings of nearly every modern reformer, 
that it swells and palpitates in every aspiration after a better future, and inspires 



162 Appendix. 

even the blindest exertion after human emancipation. It is true that it is impli- 
cated remotely and prophetically in Fourier's formula of " Destinies proportioned 
to Attractions," as it is in the American Declaration of Independence, which af- 
firms that all men are entitled to "Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"; but all 
this is a very different thing from the distinct announcement of the " Sovereignty 
of each Individual to be exercised at his own Cost," propounded as a scientific 
substitute for all Laws and Governments, and as one of the immediate working 
instrumentalities of Social Reform. So at least it seems to me. If it be not so, 
and Social Reformers of other schools accept and even claim the priority in the an- 
nouncement of this Principle, as we accept and state it, why, so much the better; 
only don't let them get frightened when they discover the whole meaning of all 
they are committed to. 

But in the next place you come upon the next of our principles in the circle, — 
namely, that " Cost is the Equitable Limit of Price." From this you dissent, on 
grounds which show that you have not fully grasped the idea of the manner in which 
Principles are appropriately put forth after all notion of authority or enforcement 
is abandoned. The gist of your objections is contained in the following statements : 

We have said that the possession of property is essential to the Sovereignty of the Indivi- 
dual. In this statement we find the refutation of Mr. Warren's second principle, that " Cost 
is the Limit of Price." According to this theory, equal amounts of [equally repugnant] la- 
hor are made to balance each other, without regard to the value of the product. Equitable 
Commerce, it maintains, is the exchange of the results of equal labor as virtual equivalents. 
A commodity which has cost you the labor of an hour is to be exchanged on equal terms for 
one that has cost me labor to the same amount of time, irrespective of the utility of the pro- 
duct to either party. 

Again : 

Individual property is based on the right of the Individual to the products of his own la- 
bor. But if the product of my labor is my own, no one can decide the terms on which I 
shall part with it but myself. The right of exchanging it at pleasure is involved in the right 
of ownership. The attempt to establish a compulsory law for this purpose is a gross viola- 
tion of my acknowledged Sovereignty. This view, we think, is fatal to the theory in ques- 
tion, apart from the practical inconveniences that would arise from its application. 

'sThis indictment seems to consist of three counts, stated or implied. 1. That 
we deny that the Individual is entitled to the product of his own labor. 2. That 
we repudiate, in some sense not specified, the possession of property, and the right 
of exchanging it at pleasure. And 3. That we attempt to_ establish a compulsory 
law to regulate price in gross violation of our own other fundamental principle, 
" The Sovereignty of the Individual." To all of these counts we simply plead not 
guilty, and put ourselves upon the country. Indeed, we are utterly unable to ac- 
count for the fact that any man, having looked into our books, could have made 
them otherwise than by recurring to another of our principles, " Infinite Individu- 



Appendix. 163 

ality," which embraces and accounts for every conceivable diversity in the under- 
standing of language. 

The proposition that " the Individual is entitled to the products of his own labor," 
cannot, it is true, be accepted without limitation and modification. If I have em- 
ployed my labor in hunting, catching, and handcuffing you, and reducing you to 
submission, hVcan hardly be assumed as an axiom of Social Science that I become 
entitled to the ownership of you thereby. So, if I employ my superior wit, or 
skill, or accumulative labor, which is power, in reducing you by more subtle means 
to a condition of servitude, the axiom in question cannot be adduced in justifica- 
tion. In order to entitle me to the products of my own labor, my labor must have 
been justly bestowed ; that is, it must have been exerted at my own cost; that is again, 
I must not throw the burdensome consequences of my conduct on others. Cost 
enters, therefore, in the final analysis, into the question of ownership. But let 
that pass. The question more immediately up now relates to the exchange of pro- 
ducts confessedly belonging to the parties. We admit, under the modification 
stated, that every man is entitled to the product of his own labor. Even this basis, 
chosen by our critic, excludes natural wealth, including uncultured or natural skill, 
from any claim for remuneration, and carries him headlong in our direction, as he 
will find when he has leisure to follow out his principle into its logical con- 
sequences. 

As to the second count, that we repudiate property and the right of accumulat- 
ing and exchanging at will, we simply deny. We only repudiate the right of ac- 
cumulating other people's property; and as for exchanges, they are the burden of our 
whole doctrine. 

As to the third, the attempt to establish a compulsory law to regulate price. This 
you regard as a gross violation of the Sovereignty of the Individual. Verily, so 
do we; and if we attempted anything of the kind, undoubtedly "Equitable Com- 
merce " would be a failure. It is simply for the reason that we do nothing of the 
sort that it is not a failure, and is not, saving the judgment of the "Tribune," like 
to be. It is precisely for the reason that we hold the doctrine of the Sovereignty 
of the Individual that we are forever prohibited from establishing not only this, 
but any other compulsory law. But this does not, we apprehend, prohibit us from 
discovering, accepting, announcing, and acting upon Principles. It is precisely 
this difference between a compulsory law and a Principle which our critic has failed 
to apprehend, and which the world sadly needs to appreciate. It is this misappre- 
hension which lies at the bottom of the hasty decision he has rendered upon the 
System of Principles brought to his attention, which being rectified, the decision 
itself goes to the ground as destitute of any support or validity. As this is the 
hinge of the whole matter at issue, therefore, let us endeavor to make it a little clear. 

We do not deny your right to the product, and the full product of your labor. 
We allow you to retain the possession of it as long as you choose. Nay, further, 



164 Appendix. 

if you determine to dispose of it, we do not require nor insist in any manner upon 
your disposing of it otherwise than upon any terms that you choose, if you can 
find a purchaser. We do not oppose a feather's weight to your entire freedom. 
We commit no encroachment upon the fullest exercise of your Individual Sove- 
reignty. We can not do so consistently with ourselves. We admit your full title 
to the freedom, first, of not selling at all, and then of selling for any price, no 
matter how great the hardship to the purchaser. In other words, you are entitled 
to the freedom of doing right or wrong, for the better or the worse, with what is 
clearly your own. This leaves the question, however, of what it is right or wrong 
for you to do, entirely open to be settled, further on, by other principles — but to 
be settled still solely by and for yourself, with no foreign interference whatsoever. 
Is it not possible that being thus entirely freed from compulsion, and thrown 
entirely upon yourself for a decision, you may wish to know for yourself which is 
the right and which the wrong principle upon which to carry on your exchanges — 
which will place you in harmonious, equitable, and the most truly advantageous 
relations with your fellow-men; which will bring you into antagonism with all the 
world, confusion, general insecurity of condition, and prevalent wretchedness. 
Will the man who shall communicate that knowledge to you thereby commit any 
breach of your Individual Sovereignty, provided he "adapts the supply to the 
demand"? If you are desirous of kDOwing the laws of health, and I make you 
aware of the Principle of Physiology which demands the ventilation of houses, is 
that "a gross violation of the Sovereignty of the Individual"? If I undertook to 
compel you to construct your habitation upon a given plan, even for your benefit, 
I admit that it would be so ; but, is simply communicating the knowledge to such 
as want it any encroachment? If a dozen individuals, operated upon by such 
knowledge, voluntarily, in concert or separately, enlarge their windows or other- 
wise modify their residences to insure this desirable end, is there any surrender 
on their part of their Individual Sovereignty? Yet to assert this would be pre- 
cisely equivalent to the fault found with our circle of Principles, by the " Tribune." 
It does not follow, because I have the right, and every other man has the right 
to the products of his labor and to the liberty of retaining them forever in his own 
hands, that it is, therefore, either right or best that all men should retain all their 
own products, and that there should be uo commerce whatsoever. Neither does it 
follow, because any man has the right to the freedom to sell his products in any 
manner that he pleases, that it is, therefore, either right or best that he should sell 
them upon the very worst principle that can be conceived of. It can not be rightly 
said that any man has a right to do wrong; but every man has the right to the freedom 
to do wrong. In other words, he has the right not to be interfered with in the exer- 
cise of his own judgment of right, although it may lead him to do what all the 
world pronounce wrong, provided only that he acts at his own cost, that is, that he 
do not throw the burdensome consequences of his acts on others. 



Appendix. 165 

Having thus completely disposed of the charge that the "Cost Principle" is per 
se an infraction of the other Principle — "The Sovereignty of the Individual" — 
the question returns, what is the right Principle to regulate the exchange of pro- 
ducts between man and man? I ask this question, not for the purpose of enforcing 
that Principle compulsorily upon you, but for the purpose of satisfying the intel- 
lectual and moral attributes of my nature. You ask it, if at all, in the same man- 
ner, for yourself. In reply, we have placed before us two different Principles; 
one, that of the exchange of equivalent Values or Benefits; the other, that of the 
exchange of equivalent Costs or Burdens. One is the Value Principle, the other is 
the Cost Principle. The one now prevails in the world, the other we contend for 
— not, be it remembered, to enforce it upon any body, but as the true or right 
thing. I have found no less than two hundred and fourteen pages absolutely 
requisite to set forth, in the most condensed manner, the parallel between the two. 
I can not repeat (in a newspaper article) what I have thus said. I can not con- 
ceive how, having read the book, you could simply repeat the old theory, the 
wrong, the outrage, the civilized cannibalism of which are too patent to be either 
disguised or palliated. It is equally inconceivable how, having read the book, you 
could reject the simplicity, the obvious truth, and the high harmonic results of the 
Cost Principle. "We may, perhaps, seek for the solution in the radical misconcep- 
tion into which you had been betrayed by haste, and which I have endeavored to 
rectify. 

Not having time or space here, then, to expound or defend the Cost Principle, 
permit me to conclude, dogmatically and prophetically, by affirming somewhat in 
relation thereto. It is nothing less than the grand reformatory idea in commerce, 
corresponding to the Protestant idea in the religious world, and to the idea of Self- 
Government in the political; and inasmuch as "Commerce is King," pre-eminently 
so, in this age, it is the Grand Idea of the Age. It is now in its infancy. Many 
a man who will cast his eye over this discussion will hardly know what the words 
mean. "Cost the Limit of Price," will be to him a jargon of terms. Neverthe- 
less in those words is contained the Most Fundamental, the Most Potent, and the 
Most Revolutionary Idea of the nineteenth century; a watchword of Reform 
which comes not humbly, saying, " By your leave," but with power, saying to the 
capitalist, "You must." By means of it, the rendering of justice to labor is no 
longer to be a matter of Grace, but of Necessity. It is an idea, too, which is to 
permeate the public mind without bluster, without agitation. Already the organi- 
zation of Equity Villages is going on with a quietness which leaves them to be 
sought for by those who have a demand for truer relations among men, and with 
a real success which will dispense with all criticism at an early day. The time is 
not distant when the fact that a leading Social reformer and reviewer pronounced 
the Cost Principle a failure, will be quoted among the Curiosities of Literature. 



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